You Aren't As Alone As You Think
by We'reAllABitOdd
Summary: In a world of monsters tragedy is not uncommon. Nine-year-old Ichigo Kurosaki just so happens to be a victim and is sent to his last living relatives: the Dursleys, as a result. Of course he's not the only one there and it's common knowledge the Dursleys dread those who wield wands.
1. Finding Common Ground

**A/N So, this will be a Bleach/Harry Potter crossover that I fully intend to finish. For anyone following it, I have no plans to discontinue my other story I just fid it easier to work on two things simultaneously as it means I don't have to tie myself to a single idea indefinitely. As for the story itself, I've seen a couple of stories with the idea of their relation and decided to do my own take on one. The Bleach in this story will be kind of Au but it should (mostly) all be there in a kind of altered way. I'd also like to note that I really hate putting A/Ns at the beginning of chapters and don't regularly do it at the end. So without further ado (apart from maybe a disclaimer) we shall get on with the story. ~We'reAllABitOdd**

 **I do not own, nor do I claim to, either of the franchises used in this work. I am neither Japanese nor male and am, therefore, not Tite Kubo. Also, while I am female and British I am neither old enough nor rich enough to be JK Rowling.**

 **You aren't as alone as you think**

 _ **Chapter 1: Finding common ground**_

It had happened all too quickly; all too violently; all too effectively. Ichigo Kurosaki could do nothing but watch as his life was torn bit from bit and his family was torn limb from limb, every single one of them. Blood stained the walls, the floor, him, the murderer, the corpses cast across the floor from whom the blood had come. The clinic had, at that moment, became a murder scene. A place of healing had quickly become one of irreparable and awful damage and destruction. And the only one left in the midst of it all was a boy.

He was petrified, eyes wide and too scared to move or even shed a tear to his felled family members. He could not bring himself to watch as the monster exited calmly, as though it had not done what it had, sparing him entirely intentionally with only a skeletal hand brushing across his hunched shoulder as it made its way out. His amber eyes were unfocused and what little they saw was like a liquid, flowing smoothly between red, white, and a mixture of the two.

But suddenly, he fell. Heavily, he hit the floor - knees first and gasping in wordless despair as he clutched desperately at his little-sister's ice-cold hand as it lay limp on he carpet, half a foot from the black-haired girl's body. His mother had been killed at the hands of one monster only a short while ago and then another had came to finish the job began by the first. He held his eyes open, not willing to see the bright, menacing beams of light that passed across he darkness every time it came. The first monster: he had seen only the after affect, the lifeless body of his mother cast atop him protectively. The second: he had been forced to bear witness as the monster carelessly shot beams of light across the room to everyone but himself, his father, his sisters, before the monster smiled at him with malicious intent not at all masked on his ghost-white face - that same face was serpentine and disgustingly distorted - and began to tear their already dead bodies apart with the aid of only his jagged talon-like nails.

So much blood.

So much death.

So little left.

He had been found later by a man with long, white hair and a beard to match, trailing down his extravagantly cloaked midriff. The garb that was draped across him, a rather regal shade of purple with glittering stars printed at random, was certainly the sort that would draw the attention of passers-by on the street. Of course, the pointed had that elevated his rather short height greatly did absolutely nothing to aid him in this problem, rather it worsened it greatly.

This man, eccentric as he may appear with a glance and, most likely, a relationship, mournfully and morosely examined the devastation that lay before him through half-moon spectacles perched towards the end of his dreadfully crooked nose. The eyes that watched from behind those lenses had lost the sparkle that was said to be found in them at any given time, instead it was replaced by a dull reflection that was constantly causing them to fluctuate between light and dark.

It was rather disgustingly artistic, he couldn't help but think. The deep crimson that had found is way into just about every nook and canny of the once stark white room was morbidly beautiful. The same could be said of the very obvious display of familiar love that had caused tear tracks to ride the slopes and wrinkles of his elderly face. Of course, the brightness in the room, the small figure huddled in fitful sleep with a dismembered hand clasped tightly in his hand wearing nothing but black, was plain cruelty - an insult to injury if you will. For the boy shone like a sunray amongst the impenetrable fog of darkness, both literal and figuratively, that had formed over the scene. His hair was bright orange, glowing amidst everything like a beacon; though whether it was a beacon of hope or one to foretell of further deaths was unclear as of that moment in time.

Praying that the boy was not injured, that the blood he was bathed in was not his own, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore levitated the nine year old so that he could move him easily as he was suspended in the air right ahead of his face. His face was not at peace despite his body being at rest, his mouth was turned down at the corners; his eyes twitching slightly beneath the lids; his eyebrows draw together to complete the deep-set scowl that the boy seemed to already have adopted as a neutral expression. The neck of his black t-shirt had been torn slightly, causing it to slip down over his left shoulder and revealing something not dissimilar to a brand upon the tan skin of the child's torso. The mark was a cold, icy blue that had been printed into the shape of something greatly representing a hand - it was too slim to be such, though, and the components of the appendage seemed to have been meticulously stripped down to their bare skeleton.

"My my, Ichigo Kurosaki. Neither you or harry Potter could ever really be called a child, could you? You have been stained with death since birth, the dead have found a companion in you: Mr Kurosaki, but do not let that fool you. It is not in the best interest of a child of human nature to seek relations among the dead as they do the living. death itself is not temporary but, without extenuating circumstances, the dead do not linger among us for too long. It will be the same with your family. Do not cling to the dead." Speaking the words to a sleeping child way well seem useless to many but Dumbledore could only hope that the boy's contradictory state of restless rest had allowed for the absorption of outside information.

The Dursleys were happy to say that they were completely normal thank you very much. It was a lie, they knew it was but they were happier to disperse the false image of themselves that they had created publically than the image far beyond their control that was what they were really like.

It was the second time in her lifetime that Petunia Dursley had found a nephew with whom she wished to have nothing to do with sleeping on her doorstep with a letter tucked into the blankets that cloaked them. She couldn't see much of the boy but what she could see, some of the features of his already angular face, were distinctly similar to those of Rose. No, that was wrong. When Rose left she left her name behind along with her belongings; those were the features of Masaki Kurosaki, not those of Rose Evans.

No normal person faced his situation even once and here she was, facing it for the second time and still intending to call herself entirely normal.

Huffing, she picked up the sleeping nine-year-old with some difficulty due to his rather impressive height (though how skinny he was certainly helped to allow that to be overlooked somewhat) and carried him inside, yelling up to her husband, son, and despised nephew that they were to have another nephew join their family. Of course, that hadn't fooled a single one of them - this was a child whom they could overuse, make his life all work and no play so that theirs didn't have to so much as border on being anywhere close.

Harry Potter had sat and stared at the figure, constantly stirring but never waking, as petunia read through the letter, unknown to him, it was written in the same neat, spidery writing as the one that had accompanied him upon his arrival about eight years before. He could see no similarities between the face he stared down at and his own - the boy was Asian to begin with, his features were sharper, his expression unwelcoming. The other boy was taller too, taller and maybe just as slim. Though there was not much one could do as they saw the boy as he was, huddled with the knees of his obviously lengthy legs pulled up to his chest wrapped in a heavy, pale-blue blanket. Even the top of his head was covered by the blanket draped around the entirety of his body.

"Ichigo Kurosaki? A name like that, an appearance like that in our immediate family? Why did Rose have to be such a wanderer?"

Harry wasn't going to lie, the other boy's name had hit his ears oddly and he had not been able to remember it due to its foreignness. At least not right away, it had taken him a fair few blocky, awkward mispronunciations to get there, each had been accompanied with a glare from the boy he had failed to address correctly.

After Petunia passed her judgement on him due to what little she knew and her distaste for her sister the boy had awoken from his unsettled sleep: shooting up with a wheezing intake of breath and a stuttering mumble of what sounded suspiciously like names. The boy's eyes were amber and squinted at everything in what was clearly a permanent expression of distaste that had began to adorn his features so early into life. But that wasn't what had drawn the attention of the other members of the household, they were all staring slightly higher up than that with a variation of expressions on their faces. Petunia was shocked, Vernon angry, Dudley impassive, and Harry amused. The boy's hair was essentially highlighter orange and spiked up randomly and messily, making him come across rather negatively - perhaps as a street-tough. He also looked far older than harry had been told he was: the face he wore, the height he had, the features he owned, the eyes that scrutinized everything they saw, the hair that could only have been bleached.

"Ichigo," The boy cringed slightly as Petunia's mouth clumsily wove the syllables together "why did you bleach your hair?"

He crinkled his nose and left a minute before he began his response "It's natural! Why does everybody ask that?" Unsurprisingly, should the name have been anything to go off of the words were coloured ever so slightly with an accent that caused a slight lilt to his vowels. Still, it was rather impressive that such a young child could already speak the language he would be required to know in his new area.

harry himself had shuffled up to the strange boy once Dudley had left for Pierce's and his parents had began their commute. He had nervously looked at the boy and spoken with a prominent stutter: a thing that had never filtered his words before. "I'm H-Harry Potter."

The boy didn't smile and eyed his extending, welcoming hand in poorly concealed confusion and intrigue. Hesitantly, he took it and tightened what had already been a vice-like grip on Harry's hand.

"Ichigo Kurosaki. Why do I already think that I know what's going to happen. Are we slaves, are we underpaid workers or are we kids who life decided that it didn't like."

"The world isn't merely as nice as we'd hope, we want much more but no such luck.


	2. Welcome to Your New Life

**You're not as Alone as You Think**

 _ **Welcome to your New Life**_

It would be a lie for the teacher of the year five class that harry Potter and his cousin attended to say that she had not been surprised by the fact that harry could be seen talking to someone in a friendly manner as he came back after the two week half term. She hadn't seen him at first, she had only heard the voice she distinctly knew to belong to Harry talking animatedly, every so often getting a quiet reply which, though the lack of volume prevented her from hearing exactly what was said, assured her he was not talking to himself.

Bright orange and midnight black.

Then she had actually seen who harry was talking to and had become simultaneously both more and less surprised. Harry Potter was an odd child but the one he was talking to surpassed even him on that scale. But, then again, that made him all the more surprising in and of himself. She had trouble believing the boy was actually nine and not already in his early teens actually. She couldn't help but feel conflicted about her opinion on the boy's hair. On one hand, it looked cool and, as she could only think of it as dyed, showed that his parents had given him some freedom with his own appearance. On the other hand, however, she din't think that artificially coloured hair was actually allowed in the school or most others.

Nevertheless, she walked over to the two, cousins she had been told, despite the lack of similarities, and guided the taller to the front of the classroom to stand in front of the whiteboard at the front of the classroom, mounted to the wall besides her desk.

"Class," she began once they had all settled into their assigned seats at the table "This is-" she gestured to the boy to introduce himself to the class. He did so quietly, his foreign name and accent making it even harder to believe that he was Harry Potter's cousin.

"Kur-no, you do it the other way around in England, don't you? Ichigo Kurosaki."

"He will be joining our class from today. I trust that you will all be kind to him and help him if he's confused about anything?"

She continued after the monotone chorus of "Yes Miss North."

"does anyone have any questions for," she prepared herself to try to say the foreign name, readying herself to have her pronunciation corrected "Ichigo?" The boy didn't say anything, in fact his dreading look of anticipation lessened, overtaken by a slight bit of surprise that was barely noticeable. She took that as an indication that she had pronounced it decently.

A petite blonde girl at the front of the classroom with hair tied back messily into a high ponytail raised her hand.

"Rose?" Miss. North called on the girl.

"Where are you from?"

"Japan."

That caused quite the uproar. Suddenly, a great many more hands shot upwards, everyone curious to quiz this new student from another country who could tell them all about it and, most likely, spoke another language.

"Jackson?"

"Where about in japan?"

"Karakura town, you won't have heard of it."

"Dante?"

"Do you speak Japanese?"

"Of course."

"Say something!" the whole class yelled at once like the excitable children that they were. Reluctantly, he mumbled something in his native language just oud enough to be heard before awkwardly waiting for the next question.

"Louie?"

"Why did you come to England?"

That was a question that he obviously didn't want to answer. His face settled further into a scowl and Harry could be seen wincing. He turned slowly, his eyes actually scary and looking even older. "Miss North," he exhaled as though it were a laborious task to complete "May I take my seat?" He spoke through gritted teeth.

She began her response in a stutter, slightly scared to speak "O-of course. You can sit next to M-Mr Potter."

He did so, his scowl still firmly in place. Then it caught her eye, towards the back of a classroom a face that seemed to be making an attempt to mimic that of Ichigo Kurosaki. It was a familiar face. The boys chins exceeded into his neck as his expression grew frustrated, more appearing as the fat warped to accommodate for the odd movement. The boy crossed his chubby arms across his wide chest, looked down, crossed his eyes slightly and grumbled in discontent. He watched the had of orange hair with annoyance and familiarity that certainly intrigued her.

"Dudley, do you have a problem?" the glares that he as sending across the classroom, drilling into the boy's back like weapons, had began to grow annoying to the teacher who had noticed them.

"No." It was very obviously a lie but he turned his eyes back to his exercise book, filing the pages of the A-5 mathematics book with what she knew to be terrible handwriting and a poor quality of work. She walked past a moment later, looking down as he struggled to do the easy work. Just as she walked off he grumbled "Stupid Ichigo," he pronounced the boy's name abysmally "What's so interesting about him?"

The boy in question sneezed loudly, being handed a tissue from Harry (which he accepted with a word of thanks) and continuing with his work; he muttered about hoping he wasn't coming down with a cold before raising his hand. Quickly, Miss North rushed to the boy's side, expecting him to tell her that he couldn't read the work or didn't understand a question - that would have been entirely understandable seeing as English wasn't his first language and his first language used an entirely different phonetic system. So, imagine her surprise when he told her he had completed the given work.

She had given him the easiest worksheet but, obviously, that had been a mistake with the ease in which he had completed it. She skipped the middle worksheet entirely and passed him the harder one, looking down at Harry who sat to his side with the middle level work, slowly progressing.

At break-time Ichigo and Harry remained inside, sitting on two of the large beanbags of the otherwise empty-of-life library, as the other students flocked to the playground with yelps and squeals and shouts of childish excitement. Miss North was not on playground duty that day, so she went to the library to look over the only children who had made the decision to stay inside. They sat, talking with the familiarity she would expect of cousins but not of the two strange ones in front of her.

"Why did you two decide to stay inside?"

"I don't like the playground." Harry answered quietly, though she knew he was avoiding his other cousin.

"It's too cold." His voice was emotionless so she couldn't tell whether he was lying, being entirely honest or hiding a part of his feelings.

She allowed hem to continue their conversation, observing from the librarian's desk (they didn't have a librarian, it was just where teachers sat to check out books for their own pupils) in silence as she directed half of her attention to the book in her hands: _Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman._ The library was dusty and the books had suffered through years of being mishandled by young children with sticky hands and no sense of preservation for things that were not their own property. It wasn't the best library ever but the carpet underfoot was soft, the chairs and beanbags scattered over it were comfortable to sit on while enjoying a book. The clock on the wall ticked rhythmically and the stereo in the corner played quiet music sometimes. The vase that sat in front of her was always filled with fresh flowers, even if they would be overlooked, just then it was a pretty bouquet of asters, cosmos and geraniums. The pinks and purples fit the bright, fun interior of the room but Miss North knew what the arrangement was meant to mean: peace, tranquillity.

Sure, it wasn't the best library with the biggest selection of well-cared-for books and people to read them but it was homely and familiar and comforting. The soft, lingering floral scent certainly beat the smells she associated with the playground - the turf, grass, mud, petrol from the road near the closed gate. Really, it wasn't hard to imagine why the boys had chosen to spend their break in the library.

But then, with a shrill whistle after a careful watch on the clock that came from outside but could clearly be heard in the library, the break ended and students reluctantly flocked back to their classrooms, still playing and chatting animatedly among themselves. Ichigo and Harry rose to their feet without hesitation and left to the hallway through which students of all ages, from reception to year six, were flooding. A young girl who must have only been in reception tripped as she tried to hurry to avoid getting caught among the worst of the foot-traffic. She began to fall, crying out as she watched the herd of feet that passed as though everything was in slow-motion. Her cries were lost among the noise of chatter and footsteps that were common place at that time of the weekday.

Ichigo saw but couldn't react. Sure, he was fast but the crowd was too dense for him to be able to force through in time. He jut covered his eyes with one hand and watched through his fingers, the other hand held in front of him, fingers splayed...

Then everything stopped.

The girl stood suspended, mouth still open in a cry, heels the only part of her body on the floor and her back only inches from what would certainly have been a painful condition, followed by a more painful trampling. The masses had halted where they stood, the abruptness causing Dudley, who had been just slightly to the girl's left, to be caught with his chubby finger shoved up his nose and his face scrunched up unflatteringly around it. Ichigo took a moment to appreciate the hilarity before looking at the girl and the situation and trying to make at least a little sense of the whole debacle. Her black hair wasn't very long and her tights were ripped, covered in mud much like her skirt. There were holes in the sleeves of her cardigan which was buttoned only partially and incorrectly over her once-white shirt that had since become brown.

Then he realised, the girl falling and just about to be trampled looked rather like Karin. He let his breath escape him in one, quick release before squeezing his eyes shut and wondering what was happening and how it had. He shook his head, pinching his arm to make sure he hadn't fallen asleep in class and been plunged into some awful, confusing dream. He hadn't. His orange hair whipped him in the eyes as he quickly rushed forwards to grip the girl's shoulders.

Then time resumed.

The crowds began to move, the girl's cries became audible once again and he felt her weight settle in his arms. Dudley took a couple of steps forward, not even noticing his cousin crouching next to him, holding up a child who was terribly close to falling amidst the chaos. The girl ceased her yelling and turned her head to focus her wide dark eyes on her saviour, he tall, unfamiliar boy whom she had never seen before and was obviously many years her senior.

"Are you okay?" He pushed her gently back to her feet in a way in which she could balance independent of his aid as he spoke, genuinely concerned for this girl's well-being and not just because she looked like his late sister. He had been assigned the roll of guardian at birth and how well had that gone? Dead mother, dead father, dead siblings. And where was he? On an entirely separate part of the globe with only a scar that had caused him absolutely no pain to receive with n entirely separate family o the one he had lost (not that they were at all the same). He had to do it, live up to his parent's expectations at least once.

Meanwhile, harry could only stare, emerald eyes wide behind once-broken wire-framed circular glasses. He was watching his cousin, his distinctive appearance exactly that amongst the crowd. He could have sworn he had not been there a moment go, that the small girl was doomed to be walked upon by a horde of students after a heavy fall that would hurt enough without the follow up. He could've sworn that her bony shoulder-blades had been only inches from the floor and Ichigo right by his side, watching with an incisor clamped around his lower lip and a hand clasped uneasily around his eyes, a gap in his fingers to allow him to watch the scene unfold ahead of him.

Ichigo was shaking a fact that didn't make the situation any easier for harry to comprehend as the other boy's composure began to crack, the numerous holes in his defences beginning to rear their ugly faces as he seemed just as shocked as harry who couldn't help but feel as though his heart was beating out of time and the rhythm of his breathing had been disturbed. Ichigo nervously ran a quivering hand through his hair, mussing it up farther and trying to force himself to stop quaking.

"Come on." The words themselves shook, the lip that had been lowered to allow it to pass was bleeding, crimson just reaching his chin and staining the tanned skin. Harry dared not question him -he was in a new place with new people - besides, he seemed just as shocked and clueless about the situation that far crossed the line of odd as harry himself did and Harry hadn't even experienced the event; which, in all honesty, may have been the better of the two situations played amongst the cousins.

Without letting loose a single one of the questions that burnt at his throat as though he had swallowed a strong acid, the pulled at his teeth, the nipped at his lips, he did as asked and followed. The retreating form, tall and slim s it belonged to the cousin he never knew he had, was a good thing to keep his eyes fixed on. One would be absolutely right to say that, at least then, normalcy was nothing but a idealist fabrication. Despite that, even if he wasn't normal Ichigo he was there, and he cared enough to make that known.

 **A/N If I've confused any one with this little insight into Ichigo's adjustment to his new life (namely the very loose description of the British school system) feel free to review or PM me or whatever and I'll explain it because I didn't do much in way of explanation to what just may be a confusing system to one not familiar with it. ~We'reAllABitOdd**


	3. Just Like Magic

**You Aren't As Alone As You Think**

 _ **Just Like magic**_

Harry was happy that Ichigo's arrival had meant an upgrade in his living space, but the small spare room, with the added inclusion of both Dudley's old, broken toys, was really too small for the two cousins. Petunia would still wake them up every morning with a sharp knock on the door and had done so for the last year, since the orange-haired youth's arrival. It was the 23rd of June: Dudley's birthday, the first of the three of them, so the ever annoying knock came all the earlier. Ichigo wasn't bothered, Harry had been forced to adjust to sleeping through the noise of the floor creaking and the bits of broken toys that were often kicked across the floor as Ichigo exercised. That had been surprising the first time around.

Apparently Ichigo had practised martial arts in Japan and aimed to keep up with the practices, even though the Dursleys actively prevented him from finding a dojo nearby. Harry had seen that put into practise a few too many times to remain comfortable with it. Ichigo was protective and had fought back against Dudley's gang singlehandedly and successfully every one of the many times they had tried to hurt Harry with him in the vicinity. But that wasn't the only thing that he was protective of.

He had an immense, to the point of strange, respect for the dead. Harry would often joke to himself that it was almost as though Ichigo could see the dead as though they were alive. He supposed that it wasn't all that unbelievable that Ichigo at least believed that he could. In fact, he had once watched, not daring to intervene because he seemed to hold some regard for his own safety that Ichigo simply wasn't capable of, Ichigo fight a group of boys, either late teens or early into their adulthood, who had knocked over a vase left in remembrance of a girl who had died there. Not only had he won with ease, but he had also murmured as though addressing the girl whose site of death he was honouring.

But still, Harry was woken up by Petunia's screeches and banging on their closed door. He groaned and rolled over grasping blindly for the glasses he was sure he had left on the dresser by his bedside. It turned out that he had, just right near the edge of it. His fingers met the cold lenses, just barely, and then they had gone tumbling off. He groaned again.

Ichigo crouched down and picked them up by the taped bridge. "Here."

Harry did not get the chance to express his gratitude as Dudley's loud footsteps could be heard stampeding down the hall, his beefy fist pounding on their door just as his mother had done. He groaned yet again, feeling like a broken record, as he crawled out from under the duvet, glad that summer was fast approaching.

Ichigo laughed at him as he tripped, his feet tied up in the duvet. "You may want to put those glasses _on,_ you know?"

"Shut up Ichigo." He watched his cousin as he laughed again and made to change his shirt, turning to converse as he grabbed a clean one from his drawer. Harry paused what he was doing for a moment to look at something he was shocked he hadn't noticed before. "What's that on your shoulder?"

"Hmm? Oh, what? This?" he gestured to the thing that Harry was looking at, the hand shaped like a skeletal hand that curved from his shoulder to his shoulder blade. "I'm not the only one with a weird scar!" he protested.

"But how did you get it?"

"I don't know, I don't remember anything from _that night."_

They talked for a little bit longer before heading down the stairs to be met with a pile of presents that stood high, upon both the kitchen table and the tiled floor. It was really quite ridiculous to think that the most that they ever got from the Dursleys for their birthdays was an old clothes hanger or a pair of socks that had not once belonged to their own son. That was what normally happened, if Dudley outgrew or grew to dislike an item of clothing it would be passed on to them. That was why everything Ichigo wore, for none of his belongings had been brought to England with him, was too short and far too baggy and everything Harry wore left him swimming in excess fabric.

Yet Dudley sill complained as Harry rushed to set the table as Ichigo began to prepare the breakfast that he knew he'd be getting a mere scrap of. He placed down all the plates and poured out three glasses of orange juice before rushing to the coffee machine, aware that he as late to wake and had set both himself and Ichigo behind. It was shocking to him, who had never had much more than that which was deemed necessary, that Dudley could honestly say what he did, at eleven-years-old no less, without getting the repercussions one would usually expect to be given to a spoilt child by their parents.

Instead his "Thirty-six? But last year, last year I had thirty-seven"

Was met with a promise to buy him another two at the zoo after an attempt to console him had been completely denied. Ichigo had placed the breakfasts on the table and Harry had poured the coffee before Vernon received a phone call. He muttered for a minute before bidding the caller goodbye and placing down the phone, looking resigned.

"Bad news. Mrs. Figg broke her leg so she can't take care of the boys!"

"Well we can't leave them in the house alone!"

"I hate to say it but we're probably going to have to take them to the zoo with us."

"NO!" Dudley protested "They can't come with us! Look at them, they're freaks!"

"I'm sorry Dudders." Petunia said quickly as he sobbed crocodile tears in an attempt to regain complete control over his own birthday celebration. It went on like that until the doorbell rang sharply, indicating the scheduled arrival of Dudley's friend, Peirce. As quickly as they it had begun, the stream of tears ceased and were wiped away by the boy's sleeve. Then Peirce walked through the door.

He greeted his friend, waiting for the family to finish their breakfast as he took a seat on a spare chair. He waited a moment before watching Harry and Ichigo move to collect the dishes and place them in the sink. He didn't offer to help, nor did he express any form of concern for the way that the cousins were treated. Why? Because he didn't like them, of course.

They were all forced to pile into the back of the car, meant for a maximum of three people, with a fair bit of difficulty. As Dudley and Peirce took the lager seats to either side of the rear of the vehicle, harry and Ichigo were forced to share the smallest seat between the two of them. They both shared the same sentiment; a thankfulness for the others thinness as well as a dislike for the accompanying boniness that made the car journey all the more uncomfortable.

Finally, they reached their destination and scrambled out of the overly-hot car. Much in contrast to his first coherent thoughts of the morning, Harry almost wished that it was still the middle of winter. The first thing that happened was a visit to a woman by the entrance who was selling ice creams. Dudley and Peirce both received large, sweet, sugary ones with no resistance from the paying adults, whereas Ichigo and Harry got cheap lemon lollies (and only because the woman selling them had unknowingly pressured the Durslelys into getting them one each when she asked them what they would like).

Ichigo and Harry were not happy to see how Dudley treated the animals: he threw things into cages, yelled at the top of his lungs to aggravate the animals and tapped on the glass on the front of the enclosures. He was treating the animals, already captive and annoyed by the abundance of young children who had not yet learned to respect them, like they were not living things, like they existed solely for his entertainment. Both had gotten rather fed up of it by the time that they were standing among the reptiles, all enclosed in large terrariums.

Dudley had demanded that Vernon make the large snake move. The large, walrus-like man had obliged and rapped his knuckles across the clear front as though he were knocking on a door. The snake did not move. Dudley declared the large, beautiful reptile boring and moved on, leaving harry and Ichigo to both wonder why Dudley had decided to visit the zoo and move to peer in themselves.

It had merely begun as muttering, consulting the informative sign next to hem and having a conversation that, while mostly two-way, did leave gaps of opportunity for the snake to fill with its own commentary. Harry wasn't quite sure what had disrupted that until he saw an excited Peirce, mouth still half open from his declaration of the snake's odd behaviour, and Dudley's large form filling the space where both he and Ichigo had stood at a comfortable distance from each other.

Of course, the angle at which he viewed this only brought further clarity. He was on the floor, watching from bellow. Ichigo standing still, but pushed away and next to him. He extended a hand and hauled Harry to his feet before sending a venomous look to Dudley before snorting and cracking his knuckles. Harry had learnt long ago that that loud crack of joints could be interpreted as a promise, and not a positive one.

He sent his own look at his cousin, firmly keeping his gaze, through the thick, circular lenses of his spectacles, watching the whale-like boy press his nose up to the glass until it fogged over with his breath. Then suddenly he was no longer pushing his nose up against glass. No. he was falling forwards, quickly tumbling into the shallow water that pooled at the bottom of the terrarium. He backed up slightly. The snake, free of the clear material that had held it there for so long, wasted no time in moving from the terrarium and into the room, amidst the feet of the public who ran and backed away in fear.

Then the snake turned to him and Ichigo, looked at them with an almost human intelligence in its eyes, before hissing. The problem there was that neither felt threatened and both understood exactly what was meant by the snake. "Thanks." The "s" on the end of the word was stretched out as one would come to expect of the stereotypical snake. Ichigo merely continued to scowl, he could talk to the dead but talking to snakes seemed a stretch to admit to if he wished to continue to consider himself sane, but, as the snake slithered passed his feet, Harry allowed a shaky, unsure "You're welcome" To pass his lips.

It turned out that Dudley had been enclosed in the newly reappearing glass. After freeing him, the management and staff had wrapped Dudley in a towel and gathered the family and their "friend" into the staff room. It was there that they received tea and an abundance of apologies. Harry almost had to laugh, Ichigo was sitting next to him, staring at the surface of his un-drunken tea with absolutely no reaction to the situation that had just happened. He was muttering though, in English none-the-less. That was rare – if Ichigo were to mumble to himself he would revert to his mother language.

Ichigo couldn't help but be slightly unsettled. It wasn't often that he saw ghosts within the land of established businesses. Though that wasn't the unsettling bit; usually the ghosts he saw had been dead for approaching a year at the very most. It was clear that girl had been dead longer, much longer. She couldn't have been much older than himself, maybe thirteen, but she wore a regal-looking gown of faded taupe that brushed the ground slightly. It was trimmed with lace and flared out in a skirt from the tighter bodice. It wasn't the sort of thing Ichigo had ever seen on the living, bar maybe a few girls on Halloween. Her hair was messy and the gown was lightly torn, as was the flesh on the left of her face.

Her voice came out in a pained gurgle that he could barely decipher and it was all he could do to fix his eyes on his mug as not to appear to be staring at a random corner with empty eyes. All he could hear was a cry for help, repeated with an ever-increasing urgency from the very moment she realised that he could see her. He tried to shush her, to console her, to no avail. In exasperation, he pulled at the neck of his shirt, shifting the loose material enough to reveal the very present markig on his shoulder.

The ghost launched herself into an entirely new round of hysterics the moment the mark had caught her eye. "You are cursed! He has gotten you! The stories are not good, the tales do not hold an ounce of positivity. Thou shall find yourself facing thy curse soon!"

He didn't get the chance to question her before she left like no ghost he had ever seen before, in a swirl of white that span like a tornado for a moment before shrinking in on itself and disappearing entirely into the air.

Harry, of course, hadn't seen any of it.

Vernon hadn't seen anything either and, as such, was unaware of just how shaken his nephew was. Not to say that he would have cared either way. He yelled at his nephews the very moment that Peirce had left them. He had grabbed Harry's hair and dragged him by it, clasping Ichigo's shoulder roughly and doing the same. He shouted until his face was red, took a deep breath, then shouted again until his face was swollen and purpling.

Neither boy found himself able to apologise, claiming the event was beyond their own understanding, like magic. Little did they know, after they were sent to their room (still too small to share), they were entirely right, just as the elder Durselys had feared.


	4. Write what you cannot say aloud

The ghosts were giving Ichigo a headache.

Since the incident at the zoo their numbers had to have increased tenfold at the very least. While the ghosts that surrounded him were all normal ones, those who had chains that were attached to nothing jutting from their chest and practically worshipped him when they found that they could be seen by some, their accumulative noise may have just been enough to blanket the anguished wailing of the ghost who had deemed him cursed and refused to elaborate on her worrying, senseless declaration.

It was only made worse by the fact that he couldn't tell anyone. Back home and a few years before he would have been able to talk to his family about it. Yuzu would have agreed and told him that what little sense she had of the spirits had increased a fair bit; Karin would probably have gained her own entourage of ghosts, probably smaller than his own, by that point as well. Old Goat Face would probably begin to sob again, complaining to the poster f their mother that Ichigo had despised and strived to get rid of from the moment that it had been put up about how unfair it was that he couldn't see the dead that bothered his children so much.

The poster was gone now.

If he were to tell Harry, the only friend he had made since waking up in the Dursleys' living room without an idea of how he had gotten there and only a rough haze that hurt his head to think about of how his family had been torn from him, he would think he was crazy. Ichigo wouldn't consider himself a social person but he also wouldn't have been happy to lose the only company that he enjoyed.

If he told the Dursleys the reactions would be indefinitely worse. The likelihood of him being kicked out of the house he couldn't call a home was almost 100 percent. He would be out of the door before he had the chance to plead his case, the single bag into which he could fit all of his belongings slung over one shoulder and no thoughts of a possible destination in mind. If he dared to open his mouth about the irritating increase of dead people that treated him as though he wee some kind of rumoured spectacle that were just being unveiled to the public he would refuse to consider himself anything but an idiot ever again.

Harry may not have known what Ichigo's problem was but he knew that their was one there. He had been quiet, quieter than usual, since Dudley's birthday and had barely registered his own. He was mumbling more and in English at that. He hardly ever looked up anymore, instead staring at the floor as though he were avoiding making eye contact with something that wasn't there. Instead he let the world pass by, not affecting him at all as though he and it were two separate things that had never once been joined in anyway.

That was why he tried to take as much responsibility as he could shoulder as Ichigo was lost to whatever it was that consumed him.

It was his turn to collect the post on the day it seemed as though Ichigo had finally awoken.

There were letters as there always were, bills and junk mail, but among the usual there were two things that very much stood out. They were letters just the like the rest but were rather different in just about every other way.

The envelopes were made of parchment and heir contents thick and heavy. It was almost as though he sender hadn't been informed of the invention and popularisation of modern writing paper. As he picked them up he felt the distinct roughness pass along the pads of his fingers, the texture setting them apart further from the nondescript pile of paper envelopes that they were among.

His fingers passed over a raised edge, smooth and fluid, on one side of each letter, and another on the opposite side, raised and bumpy.

He looked down at the interesting letters and was rather surprised to see that they were addressed to himself and Ichigo The first fluid raised edge was the writing that spelled out their names. The second was the wax seal that only made his suspicion that the sender was very oblivious to modernity stronger.

He brought the post into the kitchen where everyone else was. Ichigo, looking no better than he had for a while, was serving the breakfast. That job had been assigned to him permanently. Harry had a tendency to burn things slightly and the Dursleys did not appreciate that.

he dropped the majority of the letters in his hand in front of Vernon as he waited for his breakfast. He picked up the first of the letters.

"Oh, Marge is ill. Ate a funny whelk."

"Dad!" Dudley suddenly yelled, tearing the odd letters from Harry's hands as he made to open the one addressed to him. "Harry's got a letter!"

"Ridiculous. Who'd be writing to y-" He froze as Dudley passed the letters to him and Ichigo filled the plate sitting before him. Petunia heard the abrupt silence and stood from her own chair to see the cause for it. She looked over the large rounded shoulder of her husband and read the addresses. She stopped where she stood, eyes filling with a fear that Harry could not ignore. Ichigo did not see it. He was mumbling gain, the words that left his mouth distinctly English even if Harry couldn't fully grasp any single one of them.

Dudley made a grab at the letters held loosely in his father's hands that had went slack when his face went white and his sentence had cut off. That brought Vernon back. He snatched the letters to hi chest the second before Dudley could latch onto one. Then Dudley began to throw a tantrum as Vernon insisted on holding the letters out of Dudley's reach.

Even as he sobbed, great fat tears trailing salty tracks down the contours of his fatty face, phis parents did not relent.

"Out!" Petunia declared with a bark as cold as steel. For Harry and Ichigo it was a normal way to be addressed but for Dudley it was wrong and it was evil.

He sobbed more, crocodile tears pooling in the lines by his mouth that had deepened with the distortion of his face caused by the false bawling.

Petunia did not relent. Her stern gaze was fixed on her sobbing son, waiting for him to follow her command. Finally, realising his efforts were fruitless and the burning in his throat was for nothing, he stalked out of the room after his cousins.

Instantly, all three pushed themselves up against the door. Ichigo's head was above both Harry's and Dudley's so he merely stood straight and as close to the rack between door and wall and focused on what he may be able to hear. Harry and Dudley were left to argue silently over who would take the keyhole. Dudley won the fight and Harry found himself trying to listen through the gap between the door and the floor beneath it.

They couldn't get much. Not much made sense for those who were not in on the secret being discussed as urgently as though it were a murder. What they could pick up on and make sense of was not a very good sign. What was so wrong with the side of the family that Ichigo and Harry came from?

Over the week harry made some rather intense attempts to get to the mail before Vernon, aided by Ichigo after he told him that one of the letters had been for him. The orange-haired boy had really seemed to be dragged back to reality when it was brought to his attention that he existed within it. Unfortunately, they failed.

They had believed that their attempts were extreme initially but Vernon had shot them down before their gun was even loaded. He began to sleep on the doormat so that he was the first there. He boarded up the letter box so that nothing at all could pass through. He had boarded up the door so they had to get their eggs delivered through the kitchen window by a rather curious and confused young man. Then they had cracked the eggs, found that each contained a letter, and Vernon had taken his hammer and the wooden planks once again. There was no longer any entry point to the building and that worked both ways. It was a prison, no one came in and no one left.

The then letters had found another way in, surely the last of all of those that would not damage the buildings infrastructure.

Letters, enveloped in rough parchment that tickle his skin as they brushed passed him, began to stream through the unlit fireplace. they filled the room, flying like humming birds that flitted bak and forth and were never quite still.

Harry made it a game. he jumped and reached fr the letters until Vernon slung a thick arm around the youths thin waist, hauling him from the room without a single letter in either person's possession. roughly, the door was slammed behind them, hitting the frame with a loud noise that sealed Harry and Ichigo from the letters that were rightfully theirs.

With nearly no time to prepare they were ordered to leave the house at number Four Privet Drive that was perfectly normal, thank you very much. Dudley slowed them down quite a bit in their departure. Harry and Ichigo both walked out of the door with only a small bag on their bags holding the extent of their belongings. Ichigo knew that that would be the case. In their bags both had clothes, harry also had a few of the toys he had owned in his childhood that had not been broken by Dudley and Ichigo had a notepad and a Shakespeare book sitting in the bag that he wore.

Dudley's bag was perhaps the biggest that either had ever seen. It was also very much overfilled, pieces of plastics sticking out of the opening that was barely even partially zipped. Yet he was still trying to shove more in. With another tantrum he was forced to abandon a couple of his entirely unnecessary belongings that he had insisted on bringing with him.

They all piled into the car, surrounded by more bags than would fit in the boot and void of all letters.

Vernon's first course of action was to have them signed into a hotel, one of the cheapest around.

They had two rooms between the five of them and Dudley was far less than impressed when he realised that he would be required to share a room with his two cousins. Promptly, he dumped his bag that still could not be zipped up onto the bed, allowing an array of miscellaneous items to spill across the wrinkled off-white bedding. He decided to take that as a way of claiming it. Harry and Ichigo were left to sleep tops and tails on the threadbare couch that felt vaguely like sandpaper, topped with blankets and pillows that felt only slightly softer.

"You better not shove your feet into my face." Harry warned jokingly.

"No promises. It's not my fault I'm tall."

"I don't see what all the fuss about these letters is."

"I don't think I've actually seen one of the letters properly."

The next morning was no better than the preceding night. The breakfast tasted stale and the texture was unpleasant. Hardly anybody else was staying in the building and those that were seemed sketchy to say the least. Ichigo had to admit it seemed as though they fit right in. Vernon hadn't shaved in a while and his beard was growing unevenly, he mumbled to himself under his breath and his eyes twitched and hands shook. Ichigo looked like as much of a street rough as always and both he and Harry, as always, wore ill-fitting clothes. Harry's glasses were held together at the bridge by a thick wad of tape and both his hair and Ichigo's as kept in its perpetual state of messiness that neither could possibly fix.

As they ate a staff member walked towards them purposefully. Her eyes were filled with confusion and her arms with parchment. She had their post.

"Ae you the Dursleys?" She asked with a little bit of unease edging into her voice.

"yes." Petunia answered straightforwardly.

"I have some mail for you. There's more in the mailbox."

Vernon had them checked out by the end of the day and in the car again. Ichigo and Harry had still yet to breach the parchment envelopes containing their letters.

They drove for hours and hours. When anyone, Petunia included, began to ask Vernon where they were headed he would merely um tunefully in response, sounding inappropriately cheerful as they drove with no end in sight.

At one point Vernon left the vehicle to enter a store even sketchier than the people in the hotel in which they had stayed. He returned to the car in which he refused to turn on the radio, forcing them to sit in an uncomfortable, stifling silence as it became clear Vernon had no plans to provide an answer for them and they had ran out of alternative conversation topics. He was holding a long package, wrapped in slightly yellowing material.

No one really wanted to think about what he may have had in that package and everyone was aware that Vernon was standing on the line between sanity and insanity, beginning to tilt forwards into the latter.

Their car set off again.

Until, finally, it stopped.

They, moved into another vehicle. It was smaller than the car, older and a lot less safe. It was a small boat made of wood that had seemingly recently began to rot.

The man that had rented it out to them did so with a toothless smile, displaying blackened gums, paired with crazy eyes that were so bloodshot that they were more red than they were white.

Harry and Ichigo were expecting to have to row their way to the only place that they could see in the miles of steely water that crashed around them violently. Vernon took up the chore for himself instead, humming an unfittingly merry tune and smiling oddly widely as he went. He didn't seem to tire and helped his family to step out of the unsteadily rocking boat underfoot. He then allowed them into the tiny little wooden hut that must have stood there for a century on the tiny little rock in the middle of he ocean.

That night was no easier than the last. It was far worse, in fact.

Thunder crashed overhead like a drum beat played by a novice who had no sense of rhythm. Lightning danced to the deafening beat, just as out of time as the drummer. the light seeped through both the walls and the windows. Harry and Ichigo lay on the floor side by side, illuminated by the uneven flashes of light that filled the air. Neither slept as Dudley snored a few feet away on the couch that was even more threadbare than the one that they had slept on the night before.

Both listened for the steady beeping of Harry's watch as it counted down the seconds, barely heard over their breathing. Ichigo was tracing a finger through the dust on the floor, cutting sharp lines into the shape of a cake. As the clock ticked to midnight Harry blew on the drawing, blurring it, as to replicate the blowing out of birthday candles.

Then there was a slam. it was too loud and close to be another rolling clap of thunder. Cold air filled the room, the dampness increased and the whistling howl of the wind whipping past their heads. Immediately the thin blankets covering them became entirely useless and the cold left them numb. The wind that displaced their hair blinded hem with strands of two very different colours. The wind made such a noise, like an animal howling in anguish, and in such a frequency that the two felt as though their hearing had left them both temporarily. The Dursleys all awoke soon after.

Vernon held a gun in his hands, poised and ready to shoot. There was a hulking man standing outside of the door, his hands wrapped around a bright pink umbrella and his expression hidden in tendril after tendril of thick, dark hair and beard.


	5. There is no time There is no end

The hulking figure did not appear even the slightest bit intimidated at the sight of Vernon's rifle, in fact he seemed amused.

He took a single, gargantuan stride forwards towards the walrus-of-a-man who shrunk under his gaze and looming presence. One hand, the size of a bin-lid and in no way befitting of man and not a creature who did not belong in that world, reached forwards and closed around the end of the gun, bending it upwards as though it was made of rubber. Vernon shrunk further, his grip on the now-useless weapon slackening as his small, beady eyes widened as much as they could within his flabby face.

"Oh dry up Dursley you great prune." The man's voice was rough and scratchy, his accent causing a change in a few syllables. His eyes, black, beady and beetle-like, though not unkind, scanning the room as though searching for something. His eyes landed on Dudley, unable to find any other child present Harry was hiding himself and Ichigo hadn't wished to invest or immerse himself into what was surely a strange situation.

"Well, Harry, you're a bit more along than I'd've expected; especially around the middle." he stepped forwards, approaching a cowering Dudley with an odd look across his face "Though I did think there'd be two of ya." The latter statement came out a gruff mutter clearly addressed more to himself than anyone of them.

"I'm not Harry." Dudley responded, doing something he never did: stuttering.

"I'm Harry." Harry, in a sudden, unexpected bout of confidence, stepped forwards.

"Why of course ya are!" The man explained, moving away from Dudley with a further ginormous stride. "But where's the other one?"

Ichigo sighed, there was an unpleasant unsettlement in the pit of his stomach that told him 'the other one' was him. He rose from the settee, feeling rather fed up with everything.

"There ya are!" Hagrid exclaimed upon seeing the tall boy with the orange hair whom he had not seen since he had left him on the Dursley's doorstep a couple of years before.

"Now, we haven't got a reply from you two, I trust ya haven't got yer letters?"

"No." Ichigo replied simply as Harry shook his head timidly.

"Here ya are. I'm trusting ya want to go to Hogwarts?" From one of a multitude of pockets littering his coat he retrieved two letters, identical to the ones that had been haunting them for the past while. Harry eagerly took his, noping his hand was not shaking to such an extremity as it felt it was.

"Hogwarts?" harry asked as ichigo broke the red wax seal on his parchment letter.

"Hogwarts." The man confirmed simply, taking a seat on the settee clearly not meant to support a weight as great as his own as it sunk in the middle where he sat, creaking protestingly. "The best school there is." He grinned proudly, expression clear even beneath the mass of hair that covered his face.

"I'm sorry, Harry said, so polite Ichigo could feel the falseness surrounding him "But a school?"

"Well blimey harry!" Hagrid seemed immensely surprised at the reveal of Harry's cluelessness "Haven't you ever wondered where your parents learnt it all?"

"All what?" harry's eyes narrowed and his eyebrows furrowed, reminiscent of ichigo's, who had just began to immerse himself in the conversation.

"You mean you don't know?" His black beetle eyes grew slightly angry as his great head turned in the direction of the Dursleys.

Ichigo lifted his arm, dangling something from his slender fingers and catching Hagrid's eye.

"Magic." He answered simply after harry's failure to. He swung the object in his hand as it hung loosely.

Hagrid nodded and replied gruffly "Right Ya are." He still was not calm and harry was alarmed, both at the look on his face and the fact that ichigo was standing right within the range of potential damage, entirely unaffected.

"You didn't tell them?" His attention was refocused on the Dursleys, his anger directed to them.

The large man addressed shrunk down into himself, backing up slowly and stuttering incoherently until his back hit the rough wooden wall behind it and the ever increasing intensity of the glare was deemed terrifying enough to elicit a high-pitch squeal that arose from somewhere deep within the man's throat, higher than it had any right to be.

His response was squeaked, spoken as hands were wrung together uncertainly, fingers weaved between one another as they shook.

Hagrid's eyes grew darker still in the dim lighting as a flash of lightning illuminated the dim room, lighting him eerily around the edges as the light attempted to creep around his mountain-like back. The thunder rolled outside loudly as the light disappeared, soon followed by another flash, the loud beat making vernon attempt to back up a little more, his large back being squashed up against the old wall that was really liable to fall should he put much more pressure against it.

Then, in a bout of fleeting confidence he regretted the moment he realised what he had said, Vernon spoke up obnoxiously "I'm not paying for some crackpot old fool to teach them magic tricks!"

Then everything ceased, it was as though the world had stopped moving around the seething giant who loomed above the man who was already pushing himself back into the wall. It was scarier than the flashes of lightning and pulses of thunder: the stillness that was as stifling as it was.

Harry dared not breathe as everything stopped. Then a breath filled the air, deafening amid the silence, and, for a moment, he was terrified it was him. He brought a hand to his mouth, straightening his back and watching as the world before him flashed from one place to another as his eyes flitted from here to there uncertainly.

Then he allowed himself to breathe, the tight pain in his chest relinquishing refreshingly as he realised he was not responsible for breaking the silence, even if he was contributing in doing as he was. Hagrid had exhaled.

His voice was steely and his eyes stared straight forwards, hands still at his sides, not conveying any sort of irritation or aggravation with clenching fists or twiddling fingers. "Don't," Vernon whimpered like a defenseless puppy, knees beneath him buckling slightly and causing him to fall back into the supporting so-called-embrace of the wall "Insult," the pink umbrella he held that had failed to break through his over-all intimidating visage was raised threateningly before him "Albus Dumbledore in front of me!" His teeth clashed together with a grinding noise that grated on the ears and the umbrella was flicked forwards. A flash flew from the metal ends, spinning and spiralling through the air as though dancing before hitting Dudley and sending an uncomfortable shock through him. He squealed like a piglet in distress and scurried backwards upon impact, the noise becoming something more of a snort as a little, pink, pig-tail sprouted from his tailbone.

"These boys," hagrid continued to address the terrified family in front of him, missing how ichigo was standing to the sde with his eyes facing the floor and his eyes half closed, mouth moving slightly,muttering quietly. "Have been on the admission list since they were born!" he insisted, great face just daring them to retort like the ignorant idiots he perceived them as.

He missed it as ichigo felt his knees grow weak beneath him, he ground before him spinning, wavering and warping, the incessant screaming of the most recent ghost halting to be replaced with a whisper that chilled him to the core and haunted him as he fell, filling his head on loop even after.

"There is," a drawn out breath followed, filling a prolonged, uneasy silence "No end." then another breath "There is," Another "No time."

He didn't know what it mean and did not, could not, dwell as black spots danced tauntingly before his eyes, spinning in repetitive circles and filling his head with a swaying dizziness. His knees sunk beneath him and the black dots suddenly expanded, rapidly growing before him until they were all he could see and even the image of the ghost, the back of the girl who had not allowed him to see her face, wearing the ball gown that no longer even fell to her knees, hanging in ragged tatters and paired appropriately and aptly with her dark tangled hair, matted with crimson that stained what little of her pale skin he could see.

Instead, he saw a face and was unwilling to believe it hers. The eyes were not so much eyes as sockets; her eyes were red and sunk back so far they were heavily shadowed by the bone to the point at which they appeared barely visible; her skin was the colour of alabaster, practically transparent and not showing any sign of the life she no longer possessed; her mouth was a mess of scars that congregated somewhere in the middle to form a shape that may have once resembled that of lips.

He didn't believe the awful visage he bore witness to was that of the petite ghost until the scarred mess of a mouth split in the centre, opening slightly and allowing a voice of the same high pitch as the one that had whispered before to escape. The creepy mantra was the same, spoken to the same creepy rhythm and filled with breaths of the same length, each drawn in through that hole in the centre of her face he barely thought to consider a mouth.

Harry watched as the slight smudge of orange in his peripheral vision began to fall, turning as it did and not giving his green eyes time to focus on the scene before them before rushing to the side of his cousin as he crumpled as though his legs were unable to hold his weight. Hagrid forgot his anger the moment he saw the predicament and rushed to Harry's side instantaneously.

His large hand found the boy's forehead, feeling the feverish skin burning beneath his hand.

The Dursley's watched on in horror as he stirred, his eyes fluttering open and his pupils dilating as they adjusted to the dimness of the room. He groaned a little bit as he tried to focus and find his bearings.

His lips parted and harry was very much expecting the first words to escape them to be "Where am I?" or something similar. They were not, the words were nonsensical and disjointed, awkwardly spaced out with a breath ichigo needn't have taken.

"There is no end. There is no time."

He filled his lungs and sat up slowly. Harry gently and unsurely put a hand on his back.

"What?"he didn't know what the words meant and was hesitant to ask but it felt a necessary thing to do.

Ichigo's head shook slowly, his scowl phasing back into place and his eyebrows knitting tighter than harry had ever seen them before. "I don't know."

Hagrid cuffed his shoulder once he knew the boy was okay and lifted him to his feet. He would be a lia if he said he was not worried, an emotio not present on the Dursleys' faces, instead replaced with a fear that suggested they were more scared of what the boy's sudden fainting spell could mean for them, whether there was something in the air or something wrong with the boy they were forced to look after that may further disrupt their normalcy.

"What was that?" Dudley choked out, tail forgotten momentarily as his beady eyes bugged.

"Nothing good." Hagrid replied, pocketing his umbrella within his coat where it surely should not have fit, at least with the supposed ease it did. He gently guided harry and Ichigo from the room, further distancing him with the ot-quite family to whom they had never felt connected, their minute sense of mundane-ness dissipating.

The boat rocked as they climbed into it, wavering underfoot with the addition of their collective weight. Hagrid drew his umbrella again, allowing the boys to anticipate what he was doing before he aimed it at the water and sent the boat propelling forwards faster than it should have been able to with a complete lack of manual labour.

From within the vast depths of his expansive coat hagrid made to pull out a box, at least after a few minutes spent digging through its many pockets in a desperate search.

"Ah ha." the celebratory was a quiet mumble of one.

Harry slowly and cautiously took the box from the giant hands of the equally giant man, prying open the lid slowly with quivering hands.

"It might be a bit squashed," Hagrid admitted with his gaze focused on harry nervously as he opened the box so suspensefully "But I reckon it should taste alright."

Harry was shocked to see the contents of the box: a birthday caked as squashed as hagrid had suggested, slathered in an excess of chocolate icing that was also smeared on the off-white cardboard of the box. The top of the box was decorated with green, iced letters in handwriting akin to a child's ' _Happy Birthday Harry'._

As the look of shock on harry's face faded into one of happiness hagrid allowed allowed hi own look of nervousness to do the same, his wide smile being buried beneath his bushy facial hair but his eyes still shining with the new emotion.

He looked so different to how he had earlier that Ichigo would have laughed had he not been caught up on what the weird ghost said. The words would not leave, running around his head, chasing the word curse that had never once left, the two brawling for dominance in his thoughts and coming to a stalemate.

Hagrid would not, after Harry was caught up in his birthday cake, take his eyes off Ichigo. He was worried - the boy looked healthy (if a little underfed) and the sudden fainting spell did not make any sense - and all he could do was hope it didn't happen again. If he did drowning would be a danger, the water before him was most probably where he would go.

Ichigo focused his eyes on the steel-coloured water in front of his eyes, much calmer than it had been the night before when they had been forcefully owed to the hut, his mind too focused on the ghosts that were infiltrating his life more than ever before to consider resisting. The water slightly reflected the sky above, glinting with the light of the sun as it rose beyond the horizon and the pastel colours that streaked the sky,dimmed by the murkiness of the surface that was only just reflective.

The sky above was brighter and prettier but his eyes had grown used to the dark.


	6. A world that is not yours

Ichigo was humming slightly, strolling through the busy streets of London and not needing to give any concern to the thick crowds that dispersed around the overly large form of Hagrid both he and his cousin trailed. He didn't miss the odd glances nor the fact they were, for once, not directed at him and his appearance that simply did not allow him to be lost among a crowd.

The noises of the city were unfamiliar to him; he was used to Surrey not London. There was the noise of people, a babble that meant nothing but could be split up into a number of different languages, one of which was his mother tongue, the very same he had missed for so long, the sound of feet over pavement accompanied it, beginning to form the raucous chorus from which he was aware he could not possibly escape. Then there were the less human noises, those that completed the unfamiliar symphony one would be hard pressed to find in Karakura or Surrey: the rumbling of engines as cars passed by on the roads people were practically queuing to cross; the noise of birds far above, scarce heard but still there; the roar of the wind that proved to further shield the understandability of the conversations happening in every direction; the music blaring from the shops lining the streets, it was not the type he listened to but it was that was on the radio, providing a minute sense of familiarity he had to feel thankful for.

There was another bit of parchment in his hand, crumpled in his clasped fist and unseen to those around him. Harry was reading the writing on his own parchment, voice gently cutting through the air and making the only truly discernable noise to Ichigo's ears. He would imagine anyone eavesdropping on the conversation occurring between his cousin and Hagrid would quickly dismiss the tw as insane ad perhaps begin a search for help for the two or decide to completely shut the two out and keep up a facade of complete obliviousness.

In all honesty, though he knew of the circumstances from which the conversation was born, he could not be entirely sure they were not. Or, perhaps, maybe it was the other way around; he had grown up with ghosts as acquaintances so could not really speak of the supposed impossibility of the fantastical without denying his childhood had occurred anywhere besides his own (surely slightly off should that be the case) mind.

"Can we really find all of this in London?" Harry stared up at Hagrid with awe-filled eyes, parchment clutched against his chest, wrinkling in his tight grip.

"It depends," Ichigo could hear amusement creeping into the giant's voice, the intimidating factor that had made its appearance in the presence of the Dursleys gone without a trace "On if you know where to look." He let the mysterious sentence hang as he led them further into the cloud of unfamiliarity.

On the corner of a street around which the crowd seemed to dissipate their was a pub, as unassuming as any other, that many walked past without sparing it a single glance- not one of them looked its way as though it were not there at all. Ichio didn't miss that. The building seemed to have stood their for centuries, looking as though it leant subtly to one side as it was clearly not intended to, partially structured of wood that seemed as though it were on its last legs.

"Seriously," Hagrid noticed Ichigo talking for the first time in a while "They'd call a pub the Leaky Cauldron? SUre, because that's really gonna make people wanna eat there." The boy scoffed slightly, unable to see what little of Hagrid's face his hair and beard left exposed as his expression morphed into surprise.

"You took notice of it?" The boys should have been able to see it, sure, but most were not drawn to the building.

"What that obvious health hazard? I'd fancy not being killed by it so yeah, I took notice of it."

Hagrid had to acknowledge, even if only mentally, that the boy was something strange.

Ichigo was less than pleased when he found themselves walking into the pub.

It was surprisingly busy, full of what was possibly the strangest array of people who had ever graced the two boys' vision. There were a variety of both men and women of all ages dressed astoundingly eccentrically. There was so much rather obnoxious colour in their surroundings, courtesy of the strangers, that Ichigo didn't notice a single glance fall on his hair. He was used to the disapproval and the taunting, perhaps, on the odd occasion, a little bit of admiration from but being entirely overlooked was as unfamiliar as the city. He quite liked it.

"The usual I assume?" the man behind the bar, appearing far too ordinary among the weird people he was surrounded with, called to Hagrid.

"Not today Tom." the two men were speaking like old friends as the group approached casually "I'm here on official hogwarts business!" He boasted his job with pride, eliciting a small smile from the man on the other side of the bar "I'm taking young harry and young ichigo to get their school supplies!"

The man turned his gaze downwards to the shorter of the children, eyeing the taller with a look he could not quite identify. "Well I never," He breathed the words as the boy addressed found himself unable to turn away from his gaze "It's Harry Potter!"

In an instant, every eye in the room flocked to the bespectacled boy as he stood nervously in the centre of a barrage of attention he did not understand, bunching up the loose fabric of his t-shirt in his hands.

There was a single man among the masses that stood out to ichigo, even amongst the oddities he found swarming to them suddenly. Physically, he was not much stranger than the others. He was pale and looked rather weak, shaking slightly for no apparent reason and wearing a turban that almost made it appear as though he were having trouble holding so much as his own head upright on a thin neck.

But there was something off about him.

He didn't know what but he did know it was there.

He stored the suspicion he could not yet justify without a shift in his already intimidating expression, carefully watching as the man stuttered to harry as though the boy held some form of authority over him. He certainly didn't _seem_ dangerous but something about him _felt_ dangerous. He almost scoffed at just how pitiful the man was showing himself to be.

It took longer than it should have, but they managed to force their way through the hustle and bustle of the pub and out into the area at the back.

It was nothing remarkable: a brick wall, a hard pathway and a few bins.

"Why do they all know who I am?" A rather shocked Harry found himself cautiously asking Hagrid as he stood, without explanation, before the wall, examining the bricks.

Hagrid made a slight face, clearly regretful the boy had no prior knowledge due to the unwillingness of his family "It's a bit of a long story. Tell ya what, I'll explain it once we've gotten ya both yer school supplies."

Harry took the response with a grain of salt and reluctantly allowed hagrid to continue doing whatever he was doing. He lifted his umbrella again and Harry found himself hoping there would be no further appearances of pig features.

Thankfully, that did not happen.

The end of the umbrella found a rhythm with which to meet the brick, tapping a steady, precise pattern. Then the man responsible took a single backwards pace, filling the gap the cousins had left between one another when they had halted. Then the wall itself began to morph, the bricks melding and shifting, moving in such a way the phenomenon could not possibly have been described as anything besides magic. There was an archway where there had once been a wall in a mere moment.

Beyond the wall was like an entirely separate world, one in which it made sense for the strange customers of the pub to have emerged from. There was so much neither boy felt as though they would ever be able to take everything in. There were extravagant shopfronts lining the entirety of the crooked street, all coloured and named in such a way they would never have succeeded as businesses in muggle London. The displays were just as strangely enchanting.

People walked the cobbled streets casually, looking as though they belonged as much as the people from the pub, no sparing a glance where they did not need to.

"Welcome to Diagon Alley." Hagrid spoke to the completely entranced boys as he entered and they followed him just as they had in the comparatively mundane streets of London.

Harry could not bring himself to care where they were headed first as he craned his neck in an attempt to intake the entirety of the atmosphere. He hardly noticed when Hagrid halted and Ichigo followed suit until he felt a hand on his shoulder. Ichigo looked at him rather strangely as he withdrew his hand and shoved it carelessly back into his pocket, seeming too have recovered from his shock far too quickly.

The building before them was a grand one, made of white marble that stretched far above even hagrid slightly lopsidedly. Leading upto it was a set of stairs that they had paused just before.

Hagrid had explained a little bit of what they needed to do. The building before them was the wizarding bank: Gringotts.

"It's run by Goblins." Hagrid spoke in hushed tones "Clever creatures but certainly capable of cruelty." Ichigo looked at the plaque beside the door to which his attention had been drawn as the sun that shone from the other direction illuminated it while not allowing him to actually decipher the inscription.

" _Enter, stranger, but take heed_

 _Of what awaits the sin of greed,_

 _For those who take, but do not earn,_

 _Must pay most dearly in their turn._

 _So if you seek beneath our floors_

 _A treasure that was never yours,_

 _Thief, you have been warned, beware,_

 _Of finding more than treasure there."_ He read aloud under his breath "Well that sounds cheery." he commented sarcastically before following Hagrid into the bank. The floor beneath their feet amplified the sound of their footsteps.

The staff were certainly far from human, stout and covered in wrinkled skin that would not be the same colour if i were on a human. Their eyes were smaller than most, analytic and observant. Both their noses and ears were longer and pointier than those normally seen, to an extremity that could not be overlooked.

Hagrid walked up to the front desk confidently, dwarfing it and looking down at the goblin tending it.

"Mr. potter would like to make a withdrawal and Mr. Kurosaki," Ichigo cringed slightly at the pronunciation and how strange he found his own name as hagrid dropped the sharper sounds "An exchange."

"And does Mr Potter," The goblin leant forwards untrustingly, scrutinising the boy with no hesitation "have his key?"

"Hold on." Hagrid's voice immediately impaled the tension the goblin had worked to create, shattering it "I've got it here somewhere." he dug through the numerous pockets of his coat, piling stale dog biscuits over the neat paperwork and desk of the goblin. He was less than pleased.

"Ah ha!" He raised a hand triumphantly, metallic object glinting between his oversized fingers as he held it above his head "Found it."

Another goblin came and led harry and Hagrid away, leaving Ichigo alone and awaiting instruction from a goblin as he was completely lost on what to do.

"Muggle money." The goblin commanded, holding out a wrinkled hand, complete with claws. Ichigo did what he assumed he was meant to.

He dug out a wallet from his pocket, opening it and seeing the masly collection of British currency he had accumulated and the fair wealth of yen he had and would, most likely, never be able to use. The goblin had never specified the currency ad to be British so he passed over both.

The Goblin eyed the foreign currency with interest for a moment, returning to his task a second later. He handed Ichigo a little sack of coins and spoke again "Over there." He cast a hand in the direction of a seat "Wait for your chaperone."

He wasn't the most obedient person and would readily admit that but he had no qualms following that order. He took the seat but did not place the sack in his pocket, instead shifting it from hand to hand, feeling the relatively hefty weight of the wizarding currency from beneath the burlap.

A while later hagrid and Harry returned, harry toting a bag much larger than his own and Hagrid looking nauseous. He didn't ask.

They left for the streets of the alley, heading from one shop to the next with little urgency. They got their supplies for potions from the apothecary, perhaps the grossest establishment either boy had ever entered. It was filled to bursting with a number of things held in a multitude of preservative concoctions and a few dried plants and such. Madame Malkin's hadn't been smooth sailing. It was easy to forget how much ichigo actually loathed loose clothes as he was forced to wear Dudley's old ones all the time (they were too short and too loose) and Madame malkin had not been impressed by the boy's ever deepening scowl as he looked around her shop and saw the loose, flowing robes and the children collecting their own school uniforms. She had certainly been intimidated when she was measuring him and he seemed to ensure the air around him thickened and darkened.

They had also met the twit there. He had spoken to Harry with an ai of superiority that proved to only aggravate the ale already annoyed Ichigo more.

"Shut up."

"What's this?" the boy almost laughed as ichigo had stopped simmering for a moment as he was finally left alone "The foreigner," He had not missed the boy's accent "Thinks he's better than me?"

"The foreigner thinks he is already pissed off and the brat would rather keep his head." He bit back.

The last stop, the one after that disaster, was Ollivander's: the wand shop.

It seemed as though everything in the wizarding world was inexplicably old, the buildings, he businesses, a fair amount of the people even. Ollivander's was no exception.

Hagrid had left the two to get the wand on their own, claiming he hd business to attend to and bidding them a hasty farewell, supplying them with a vague set of instructions as he fled.

The shop was lined with boxes like Flourish and Blotts with books. It was dimly lit and the only particularly noticeable colour within the shop was ichigo's own hair. There was a single wand in the window display and not a noise to breach the silence in the interior of the shop.

At least until, moments later, a ladder came gliding in, clearly manned by the magic neither could claim to be accustomed to.

The man riding the ladder smiled at them toothily, silver eyes magnified by glasses and hair of matching tone sticking out every which way in a cascade of frizziness that reminded both boy's slightly of Albert Einstein.

"Well," Impossibly the smile widened "What do we have here?"

 **A/N**

 **Next chapter is bound to be one of my favourites to write, the choosing of the wands! I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter and will agree with the wand I choose to give Ichigo (I must consult pottermore!). I always see in fanfic where people give characters wands that simply do not make sense (like non-magical and cores), are completely based on chance and do not match the characters (rather what they think looks best in terms of aesthetics or whatever is most unlikely) and I will try my best (as I did in the Art of Opposites if anyone is familiar with it [not that I'm expecting you to be, it's just my best point of reference]) to avoid that.**

 **That said, I'm open to suggestions at all times, whether that's about ichigo's wand (this chapter specifically) or just little plot points or little miny plot bunnies or whatnot you might like to see.**

 **Wow, I used a lot of brackets in this A/N (sorry!).**

 **Is anyone familiar with Kuroko No Basuke? I binged on it and now I'm regretting the lack of good, English crossovers (curse you monolingualism!) because, as you might be able to tell if you look at my profile, I really like crossovers!**

 **I'm just rambling now, so, if you want to please feel free to read, review and favourite. Some of the reviews I get on this story are quite lovely to read and I enjoy reading constructive criticisms as well if you want to leave any (it's good to improve).**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	7. surpassing normality

The children stood, wide eyed at a man who looked back, silver eyes glassy and unnervingly knowing.

He broke the atmosphere of unknowing tenseness ad tentativeness after a moment,striding forwards and requesting Harry to approach him. "Raise your wand arm." He instructed. Harry assumed that just meant his dominant hand so he cautiously lifted his right arm. Behind his perpetually broken glasses, his eyes flickered nervously and unsurely to the face of the strange man of whom they knew nothing to his cousin who looked oddly comfortable with the strangeness, hands stuffed into pockets and eyes focused on harry. He was scowling still, though.

The man moved away before Harry noticed anything odd about the measuring instruments used. As the man pottered about his shop, glancing at identical boxes and slightly more interesting nes, thoroughly examining some before either piling them into his awaiting arms or replacing them in their original places, almost as though playing a game of jenga against no opponent but physics, the tape measures began to move independently, measuring dimensions of harry he couldn't possibly see being useful to the odd man whom he assumed was Ollivander, down to the space between his nostrils. He crossed his eyes as he tried to look, eyebrows furrowed and attention taken away from the man who was so piled high with long, thin boxes he could not be seen over them.

The man with silver eyes and silver hair hesitated a moment after placing his boxes down before selecting one, removing its lid and revealing the stick inside, nestled amongst a soft lining. With a spindly hand, he drew the wand from its resting space, gently twirling it in his hand so the larger base was pointed towards Harry.

Unsurely, Harry extended an arm, shaking as it found a grip on the offered wand. The wood felt rough and foreign beneath the pads of his fingers, simultaneously scratching and tickling, ensuring he felt uncomfortable holding it.

He just stood for a moment, arm half-extended, nose scrunched in confusion, entirely stationary and feeling rather silly as he stood there, witnessing the expectant face of Ollivander shift the longer he stood and the scowl on his cousin's face remain unchanged, even as his eyebrows continued to rise little by little in a mocking sort of curiosity Harry new most would be unable to discern should they see the expression.

"Well go on!" harry's attention was pulled instantly from Ichigo to Ollivander whose face had quickly shifted entirely, impatience growing at a rapid rate "Give it a wave!"

Harry was startled back into the reality from which he had earlier been ejected without realising. He jerkily flicked the wand, feeling it grow more uncomfortable as the flush on his face also expanded.

It only worsened when nothing happened and Ollivander promptly snatched the wand from his hand with nimble fingers that confidently replaced the magical instrument in its previous place of rest.

There was an awful feeling of unease deep within Harry's stomach, uncomfortably warm, burning, yet still managing to slowly spread a numbing chill through his entire being, little by little.

The feeling spread more rapidly, numbing and nearly paralysing him a little more, each time Ollivander gave him a wand before taking it from his shaking hands. His eyes were focused only on his hands now, he was narrowly aware Ichigo had moved to stand behind him, probably glancing over his shoulder in concern.

He couldn't help but feel that hagrid's hulking figure could return at any moment, tone apologetic and eyes sheepishly refusing to meet his as he admitted to making a mistake; that he was not, in fact, a wizard after all.

He felt his heart drop towards the floor as he eyed the pile of failures grow exponentially in his periphery. That seemed to be the only part of him he could move, pounding on the inside of his ribcage as though caged inside like a wild animal or angered convict.

But then that feeling dissipated the next wandgrip sat comfortably in his hand, the weight of the wand feeling familiar, beginning to melt the ice that was spreading through his veins and cooling the burn of his stomach.

He waved the wand and felt the warmth become physically, growing into a gold stream that burst artistically from the wand-tip, slivering through the air like a stream before shrouding him like a mist. Once the gold faded and he could see again Ichigo had moved again, his scowl lessened. Ollivander was mumbling to himself, eyes squinted with an intelligent curiosity that intrigued Harry.

"Curious. Very curious." The man mused to himself as his eyes remained fixed on the wand hanging loosely but comfortably from Harry's fingers.

"I'm sorry," Harry spoke as he returned the wand to the old man who put it back in its box without paying any mind to what he was doing. "But what's curious?"

Those silver eyes twinkled, glinting like the precious metal, polished and put out in the sun, not confined within a dark, dusty wizarding shop. "That wand, my boy." He smiled as he spoke somewhat cryptically to begin "The core is that of a phoenix feather." He gave harry the sealed box, placing it i his hands as he hardly registered what was happening aside from the gently spoken words leaving the man's lips "But the phoenix who gave the feather in that wand gave another." He paused, looking around with wide, bug-like eyes "Just one other." He lifted the corresponding number of spindly, pale fingers "Why, the wizard who possessed that wand is the very same who gave you this scar." His voice had lowered considerably, the end of the sentence fading away in a breath that carried away the last syllable, unfinished. His nimble fingers ghosted Harry's dark, unruly fringe, trailing over the small patch of skin on which the narrow, sharp line of a scar could just be seen. "I expect great things, Mr. Potter," His voice had risen again, as if or dramatic emphasis the man as fully aware he was creating, doing so only for the fun of drawing a reaction from the children he often served in his shop. "After all," He smiled slyly as his tone fell again "You Know Who did great things," He took a miniscule step backwards "Terrible. Oh yes." The latter part of the statement was nothing but a whisper, soft and gentle, almost to the point of scariness "But great!" he spoke with excitement but in hushed tones, harsh sounds over emphasised and highlighted with a smile that made Harry feel uncomfortable.

Ichigo coughed as the thick dust that danced through the air tickled his lungs, drawing Ollivander's attention to him.

"Ah!" He breathed, almost as in surprised realisation "Mr. Kurosaki, is it?" Ichigo didn't know how the man knew his name. "I remember your mother. She was a strange one, great, but she was strange. She had an odd affinity for magic, a familiarity even she did not understand at the time - I don't understand it myself, even to this day. How is she these days?" Harry knew the final question wasn't the best of things the man could have said to either of them but was slightly envious of the way ichigo was addressed at least semi-normally. "I do believe she disappeared off the face of the Earth soon after she graduated." he continued before Ichigo could say a word.

"She's dead." Ichigo deadpanned.

Ollivander's hazy eyes clouded over more, darkening and dropping. "I see. A terrible fate upon an undeserving woman. I hope she died in peace."

"I wish she had."

That drew the conversation to a halt. The enchanted tape measures began their work again as Ollivander kept his mouth firmly closed, slightly put ot at not knowing something for once. He travelled around his shop once again, face entirely impassive as he studied wands with eyes that showed the concentration his face did not betray.

He did not collect many boxes, picking up a fair few before replacing them with a shake of the head that portrayed a sense of confusion, almost entirely foreign to the man. He returned with only a few wands in his arms.

With a sharp clap of his hands the tape measures fell to the floor, suddenly lifeless and completely mundane. He gently put down the few boxes he had, eyeing them unsurely. He reached for the first one blindly and removed it from the box with the same practiced ease as always, placing the entirely unremarkable piece of twisted mid-tone wood in Ichigo's extended hand.

He waved the long limb, watching with sharp eyes as the wand emitted a foggy, blue haze that scattred for only a few centimetres before dissipating and fizzling away. He scrunched his nose as his scowl deepened, unimpressed.

Ollivander snatched the wand back decisively, replacing it in its box. He presented another, this one darker, straight and carved ornately at the handle. He waved this one too, watching as it, again, gave a small, lackluster response.

"How odd." Ollivander mumbled "Wands don't often react at all to those who are not their owners when not supplied with a command. Especially wands as proud as these. How odd." He passed over the next wand, pinkish wood, smooth and sleek, almost soft to the touch. Ichigo didn't even get to wave the wand before it found its way back into the possession of a wandmaker who most would assume would be frustrated by the difficult customer.

They would be wrong.

Garrick Ollivander was very excited.

He scooped up the few wands he had remaining but had yet to try and put them back in their place as he moved through the shop at high speeds, unsettling eyes scanning shelves with an odd, impatient happiness. It seemed he could not find what he was looking for as he disappeared into the back of the shop, leaving the shelves on display untouched.

It took a moment, during which a little bit of chaos and a fair bit of fast-pace, unintelligible muttering could be heard, before he returned, cradling a well-decorated box. It was dark, velvety, patterned with a repeating square-ish pattern in gold. It was also coated in dust, a layer of which could be seen transferring itself to Ollivander's pale fingers and his clothing.

He uncapped the box with eyes wide, wider than ever, breath paused and mouth pulled in tight, interest very much invested in the wand he held.

"This," he extended a hand, tentatively holding the wand upon which he stared with awe "Is a very special wand." The wand itself looked ancient, older than any of the many Ichigo had seen earlier, sharply pointing to the sides as it bent, the long wand engraved deeply with patterned lines that travelled its entire length.

Ichigo looked at it as it was held in front of his face, ready to be taken. There was something strange about it he found hard to place. "He gently took the wand, at last.

He flicked his wrist, watching in awe as the air before him exploded in a flash of electric blue that filled the entire room but did not hurt the eyes or damage the room. From the street outside the light could be seen, causing people to stop and stare as they bore witness to such a reaction they had never once seen before.

As the light slowly faded, gently evaporating, Ichigo could feel his scowl dropping and see Ollivander, smiling widely but still scrutinising him with ancient eyes. "Seventeen and a quarter inches, unyielding." Ollivander declared, stopping before saying any more. "Elder wood." To him this was quite the feat, to sell such a rare and difficult wood, to the children it did not yet have any significance "With a core as strange as the wood - a dual core. Phoenix feather and dragon heartstring." he smiled wider still, looking almost as if his face were ready to split in two. "You are quite the odd customer, mr. Kurosaki. Perhaps magical oddities are a family trait?"

Ichigo only stared at the wand in his hands, still trying to discern what felt so off, quite the feat to attempt when he knew nothing of wandlore. He payed,slightly dazed, and left alongside harry into the street outside, moving along once again but filled with gossip about the strangest reaction to a wand any of them had ever seen.

 **A/N Allow me to explain the deal with the wand before you dismiss it as stupid and impossible. The dual cores wouldn't happen but Ichigo has multiple 'souls' so it makes sense even though it wouldn't in canon HP. Also, the elder wood. It is a wand wood that can be used (though it is the rarest) and it creates some pretty powerful wands. Ichigo is powerful in his original would and I feel as though he would be in this one too, I'm creating something of a link (though not a direct correspondence) between magical energy and spiritual energy. Also, long wands (larger than fifteen inches) correspond with physical oddities, I'd class the multiple souls thing as a pretty major oddity.**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	8. The Real Beginning

Hagrid was waiting for them, the mountainous man clear, even in the bustling, curious crowd. From one oversized hand hung a bird cage containing a snoozing snowy owl who snoozed with her head tucked beneath his wing. In the other, curled up, was a cat, a tiny black cat.

As they approached Hagrid presented them proudly - birthday presents, he called them, even if Ichigo's was a fairly late one. He didn't mind the delay, he had nothing until then aside from a pair of socks that had not once belonged to his spoiled cousin. The kitten continued to doze as it was transferred smoothly from Hagrid's hand to Ichigo's arm, held tight to and supported by his chest.

In its sleep the kitten yawned, wriggling and pulling itself inwards, snuggling into the copious amount of extra fabric that made Ichigo's t-shirt. Through the old, worn fabric he could feel minute claws like barely-there pinpricks.

Harry just stared at the caged owl he now held in complete awe. The sleeping bird was a sight he seldom saw. Careful not to jolt the cage as he walked, he followed behind Hagrid taking long, smooth, prolonged paces to stay as close as he dare to the hulking form of the wizard.

"Toads are ou' a fashion," Hagrid began "Owls are the mos' practical. I'm not much for cats typically either," He admitted "Bu' somethin' abou' that' one made me pick it." A giant arm flailed backwards towards the kitten that was beginning to stir.

Round eyes flittered open tiredly, dark and unlike any others Ichigo had ever seen in the face of a cat. They were too big for the face they sat in, sparkling brightly in the daylight, looking right at Ichigo with almost human intelligence to them.

"Yeah," he agreed dumbly "Something."

* * *

The Dursley's seemed to treat them more like outsiders than ever, turning the house into a prison and their room into a cell. They preferred the cell to the grounds, the confined safety to the 'freedom' in which they were targets to the wardens.

Hedwig, for that was what harry had chosen to call his owl after reading it in a book, had been confined to her cage for days and was growing exponentially more restless the longer she was trapped. They had tried to limit the movement of Ichigo's kitten as well, to no avail. The tiny creature found escape routes from everywhere and, even if he didn't often seem to want to leave Ichigo's side, would do the same when he returned, showing up out of nowhere without warning.

The kitten had been named Kaidah after a while, once name after name had been considered by the orange-haired youth before, ultimately, being rejected. Ichigo hadn't offered an explanation, he didn't have one himself, it just seemed right.

It was like the very human though not very normal - their wishes for life had simply not come to fruition - Dursleys' were walking on eggshells around them both even if they knew they could win in any battle, that the boys knew not what they were doing when exposed to the new world they had suddenly been pulled right into.

At last, the day came when they would be allowed temporary leave from the house that was no home to either of them: it was a day of joy for two young wizards who were still hesitant to consider themselves as such.

Vernon had only agreed to take them to the station as he would be in London that day anyway, getting Dudley's unsightly and unusual pigtail removed before he began his first term at his new, pretentious school.

The station, like the rest of London, was full of more people than it was surely intended to hold. Harry couldn't help but fear someone would be shoved, perhaps by another person's desire not to be late, onto the tracks.

He looked at his ticket, at his cousin, at the numbers that labelled the platform before repeating the cycle

9 ¾.

9 ¾.

9 ¾.

But, no matter how long or hard he searched, scoured the station, he could find nothing. There was no platform between nine and ten.

The raucous chorus of the crowd made each dialect and conversation almost indistinguishable from the next, worsened by the screeching and squealing, the mechanics of the trains.

Harry was about to ask a man who clearly worked at the station the location of the mysterious platform but was soon halted by his much taller cousin grasping him by the shoulder and entirely preventing him from moving any further.

"Don't be stupid." He warned "Do you really think he's going to know anything about this platform, _the one that a wizarding train departs from?"_

"I suppose you're right." he conceded "But what do we do then?"

Ichigo paused, unable to fish an answer from anywhere. At least, until one word, after a train had left with a substantial amount of people piled onto it, seemed to pierce through the previously impenetrable crowd that stood between him and the speaker.

"As always, full of muggles."

Hagrid had said that before: "Muggles" - surely it was not possible one outside of the seemingly tight-knit, exclusive wizarding community would find familiarity in, let alone use, the term.

Green eyes met brown for a moment and, in unspoken communication, it was decided they would approach the speakers, a large family of redheads carting trolleys as highly piled as their own.

And, God, were those trolleys hard to manoeuvre through the bustle! They were heavy and, due to the way the items that formed their luggage (including small, temporary cages containing animals) were precariously stacked atop one another, a liability to topple.

Thankfully, by some miracle, they did not.

They reached the red headed family safely. Harry smiled slightly as he glanced from his cousin to the family. He glanced from orange to ginger, orange to ginger, orange to ginger. Really, as similar as, had he not known Ichigo, he would have considered them, they really were wildly different.

The two cousins moved at the same time, approaching the kindly, motherly-looking woman.

They spoke for a moment before she smiled down at them and her youngest son, the same age as themselves.

"It's Ron's first year, too." She seemed to be completely unbothered by them being there, even with the numerous children she had herself, introducing them to him kindly before sending them all through the barrier.

Harry watched as the first redhead ran at the solid-looking column that divided platforms nine and ten, sure he was going to go barrelling into the unforgiving surface, his trolley spinning out of control, sending the owl upon it into a flurry of squawking and feathers as the spill of luggage took don passersby.

He didn't even look away to see Ichigo next to him, looking far too casual with the strange as he always seemed to. The scowl had not shifted by any fraction of an inch.

To his surprise, the boy, Harry believed he was called Percy, continued running straight through the column like it was made of fluid, melting around him, shimmering slightly and reforming after he passed through.

The next to go was the first of a pair of twins. They had played a slight trick on their mother before departing, leaving with grins on their identical, and they were, down to the very last detail, faces, the woman tutting through smile as she shook her head, gently shielding her eyes with a pale, freckled hand.

But then it was their turn and Harry felt the wonder that had accumulated in his gut melt away, revealing the dread and fear that resided underneath uncovered. He could feel his stomach fluttering; he could see his hands shaking as they clasped the trolley tightly, knuckles white.

Harry wasn't sure whether it was because he had realised his cousin's state or just because he decided he was going first, but ichigo went before him. There was no hesitation in the taller boy's lengthy strides.

For the first time, s he neared the platform, harry squeezed his eyes shut tight, choosing to watch the colourful light show dance across the black background rather than his cousin go crashing into brick.

But that did not happen.

Harry prised his eyes open as he felt a hand lightly place itself on his shoulder. The motherly woman was smiling at him, urging him to follow her own children and the one relative of his he actually liked, even if he had not known he existed until two years before.

He ran as fast as he dared on shaking legs that felt as though they belonged to someone else. The trolley before him wavered, moving slightly from right to left a he planted the opposing foot on the floor.

One foot in front of the other, he went sailing through what he still was not convinced was not an entirely solid, normal, mundane platform divider.

He felt like he was dreaming, perhaps even comatose - more so than ever - as the busy, dirty, loud, perfectly ordinary platform melded into one that made him feel, truly, for the first time, as though he had been immersed, without warning, into a universe entirely foreign to him.

 _At least_ he thought as he le out the air he had not been aware he was storing prolongedly in his lungs _We made it in time to catch the train._

Thick smoke billowed through the air as the old-timey steam engine launched into action. It was accompanied by a shrill whistle that seemed to be just as outdated.

With that whistle came a barrage of footsteps as families rushed to the sides of the train and the latest of the children ran in. Harry and Ichigo, with no one to bid farewell to, ran straight in, finding themselves seats.

Ron, on the other hand, was stuck outside as his mother tried diligently to remove a smudge from his nose that, just as diligently, remained in place.

"Mum! Geroff!"

 **A/N after such a long time giving you such a short chapter seems unfair…**

 **I'm sorry!**

 **Also, if you can't tell, I really hate London and trains are not my friend either, especially trains going to London. You know what? Busy places and public transport do not like me and I do not like them, especially when the two are paired. I did plan to have this sorted and up a couple of days ago but I was too ill to refine my draft (thank you jabs[!]).**

 **Anyway… Thanks to everyone who has read, followed, favorited and reviewed. As always, if there's anything you want to ask or say or whatever, leave it in a review or PM me if you'd rather .**

 **Someone pointed out to me that there was an inconsistency in Kaidah's name, so I went back and fixed it. Thank you Phoenix-Rose-Black.**

 **See you next time,**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	9. Sorting or Choosing?

Thick, grey smoke curled up into the clear blue of the sky, mingling gradually with the pastel, as the train noisily chugged to a halt by a barren train platform.

Not too far into the distance, from the large window in any of the numerous compartments occupied by students and staff, there was a rather spectacular view visible. Beneath a blanket of soft blue was an artistically imposing and contrasting architectural marvel, built from all number of hard edges that gave it distinct clarity against the organic shapes of the rolling hills and countryside that surrounded it.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

There was a click and a huff as the train door opened followed by a series of muffled slams and footsteps. People were leaving the train.

Hermione Granger glanced at the spot next to her, where the larger boy with the kind though rather confused face's head popped up over the upholstery, his messy hair sticking up on end as he diligently searched beneath the chair for what she felt must have been the thousandth time in search for his missing toad.

She sighed, pushing a section of bushy hair back behind her ear as she gently closed her book atop her lap. She stood, smoothing down her uniform skirt and robe before proceeding to rid the garments of dust that wasn't there. She glanced at him gain before tapping him on the back.

"Come on Neville," she felt she sounded rather older than she was in saying this "I'm sure you'll find him later."

He looked up at her, eyes tired "But-" he blinked a few times in rapid succession "Really?"

She nodded as she slid the book back into her bag, leaving the luggage where it lay afterwards as she, alongside Neville, walked out of the compartment and then out of the train.

She stared off into the distance as she walked, suddenly aware of how real all of these overwhelming happenings now were. It was as though they were just suddenly bursting into life at full intensity right before her. She still could not hope to comprehend everything!

"Firs' years! Firs' years!" A loud, gruff voice repeated as the crowd of children, easily dwarfed by the speaker, gathering at his feet expanded exponentially. She and Neville sent each other looks before joining.

The man smiled at them all from behind the thickest beard Hermione had ever seen on a human, suddenly becoming far more friendly than he could have possibly appeared from a distance. As they stood there, necks craned upwards, feeling tiny and insignificant, older students spared glance after glance in their direction, followed by remarks Hermione could not hear - most likely declarations of nostalgia from the time they had been in the same situation, however many years ago.

The beetly eyes of the man glistened, both in the gentle beam of sunlight he stood beneath and from its intercepting reflection flickering between eyes and water.

That water was dark, almost black yet not seeming to be unclean. On it, bobbing up and down over subtle waves and dips in not-quite-still water, were a series of small, wooden boats. None were particularly big and all had a small puddle of water sloshing around in their bottoms.

Hermione looked at the boat in front of her, grimacing as it wobbled and dipped.

"Four to a boat! Four to a boat!" That loud voice chorused.

She watched as the three boys from the train piled into a boat alongside one other whom she was sure had never met them due to his rather uncomfortable and unfamiliar mannerisms. The first in was the one with the permanent scowl - Ichigo? - who had been urged by the freckled boy who seemed less than willing to clamber in when there was nothing to balance his weight.

Ichigo had climbed into the boat with no problem, it wobbled and the waves of the river stained more of the wood darker but it did not come anywhere close to capsizing. He sent a look to Ron who was just standing there, foot looming over the edge of the boat but not daring to step in.

She looked around and found Neville, shins soaked in what could only have been river water, ungracefully attempting to scramble into the boat, kicking the shallow water with his feet in an attempt to worm in as though trying to propel himself forwards. At last, he was in and seated.

With much less difficulty, she got in beside him and waited to be joined by two strangers.

After a while, each boat was occupied and beginning to move, seemingly under its own power, towards the castle she was still struggling to believe was soon to be her school. The blue above had begun to fade and darken awhile ago, the moon presenting itself before the sun had resigned itself, barely visible stars freckling the faintly freckling the dimming sky.

The castle, too, had darkened considerably, the turrets beginning to blend with the world behind rather than contrasting against it.

A while ago, at the beginning of the debacle, they had heard a rolling noise, like wheels over uneven ground. It was fair to assume that was the other students. What Hermione was less sure of, however, was why they had to arrive at the school in such a different manner than most.

She knew they were to be sorted but not what the purpose of such an extravagant, out of the ordinary arrival was.

The dark water, bright moon reflected in an uneven ridge of waves, rippled beneath them as the boats passed fairly smoothly overtop. The occasional student dared to lean over the side slightly, their boat tilting more drastically than the gentle, lulling bobbing it had been doing, to dip a hand in the cool water.

The mountainous boy sitting to the front of the boat before theirs did so, recoiling quickly with a look of confusion and horror on his face, as an appendage of sorts raced over his knuckles. He lurched backwards into the boat, rocking it violently and clashing with the boy beside him who nearly went lurching over the side himself. He was saved, however, by the quick, panicked hands of the girl behind him clasping around his shoulders.

"Crabbe!" the girl said in a high voice, looking accusingly towards the boy who had nearly knocked the other out "Draco, are you okay?"

"Yeah," as the girl's hands tightened the boy shrugged her hands off of his shoulders forcefully "Pansy, _I'm fine."_

Neville had shrunk down in on himself, head receding into his shoulders as he peered nervously into the seemingly abyssal water, trying desperately and concernedly to locate the strange appendage that had found its way to the surface a moment ago - it was so close!

After a while, as the air around them cooled more and more as the sky got darker and darker, they were pulled into a small beach-like area where they departed. They were met there, under the harsh shadow of the rocky outcropping overhead, by a stern looking witch with dark hair pulled back so tightly against her scalp Hermione could imagine it being nothing but headache-inducing, clothed in emerald green witch's robes that billowed over her slim figure, flapping in the wind around her ankles.

She looked at them as they climbed from their boats, austere, grey eyes surrounded by lines that only added to that impression of strictness. She opened her thinly lipped mouth a fraction as she prepared to speak, only to be interrupted by a noise of exclamation Hermione recognised as having come from the direct right of her.

"Trevor!" the voice of a young boy exclaimed, earning its owner a personalised look of scrutiny. Nevill bent to the floor by the side of the boat, scooping up a dark toad in his arms and cradling it to his chest as he turned scared eyes on ones of scrutiny.

The authoritative witch, now free of distraction, began with her speech as she escorted them through the entrance of the castle.

Hermione found herself in disbelieving awe again as she stared around at the expansive halls that stretched around her in an endless expanse of connecting corridors that led to who knows where.

Each grand wall that stretched up so far above her head even the giant man could pass under them with foot after foot to spare was lined with a series of paintings, each even more animated than he wizarding photography she had only recently become acquainted with. They did not all match the ambience of the building, though, only succeeding in adding to the mystified feeling she felt as she slowly walked those halls in file with all the others who stared, just as entranced as she.

To her left, there was a wizened wizard smiling and waving at them from his portrait, clothed in brightly coloured robes. To his side was an excitable knight, roaming his frame in search of something, rushing around on metal-clad feet that clinked and jingled along with the rest of his attire.

But, to the right, there was a scene of exotic animals, the most interesting probably being the giraffe with a neck so long it began to look spindly and, to an extent, unstable as it tottered around the frame with a funny expression across its thin face.

They stopped in a large hall, before a large double set of stairs that the witch climbed up a couple of. At the top of these stairs was a set of heavy double doors.

After a while of waiting, during which the boy who had nearly been accidentally ejected from his boat decided to strike up conversation with Harry Potter, forcing the dark-haired boy to focus on him by standing straight in front of him, on the first step to make himself tower enough to intimidate.

To Harry's side, Hermione could see Ichigo clenching and unclenching his fists, scowl deepening. She couldn't hear the conversation but was suddenly aware it was not the most pleasant.

The boy on the step extended a hand, finishing his statement and waiting for harry to take it. He didn't. He retorted calmly as the witch walked down the stairs, face trained. Her shoes clicked slightly with each step. She tapped the boy on the shoulder as his hand stayed put but his face fell. He was shooed back to his place amongst the rabble of students who stood, staring expectantly up at her.

As they traversed the stage at the front of the Great hall, all eyes went upwards. Hermione had an internal moment of celebration as she heard all the surprised, entranced reactions of her peers.

"It's not real," She commented calmly to the girl standing to her left, staring up at the perfect projection of the night sky on the ceiling "It's enchanted," she continued, grabbing the other girl's attention "I read all about it in ' _Hogwarts, a History'."_

They were told to stand still in their grouping, and, suddenly, all of them were far too aware of the sea of eyes staring straight at them, each pair belonging to an older witch or wizard. Instantly, Hermione felt much smaller than she had in a while - she had gone from a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a great ocean.

The witch placed a stool at the centre of the raised platform, the three legged piece of furniture making little noise as it was placed. On top of the stool was a tattered pile of dull fabric, full of patches and loose threads. When she looked a little closer, Hermione could tell the tatty object was a hat - surely it was as old as the school itself!

Then the hat perked up, a large, wide rip towards its base opening up as it sang tunelessly and loudly.

The witch cleared her throat calmly as she unrolled a piece of parchment and, in high authority, read a name from the list.

"Abbott, Hannah." The girl to her side gulped as she shuffled forwards unsteadily, eyes shifting from one place to the next, never quite sure where to look but not daring to look at the other students.

She was told to take a seat on the stool and the hat was placed over her head. It was far too big and slipped down in front of her eyes, providing her with temporary reprieve from the watchful eyes she could feel boring into her.

She sat there for a moment more before the rip opened again. "Hufflepuff!" It declared extravagantly, eliciting a chorus of applause and cheering from the house clothed in yellow.

This same process happened for name after name, going in alphabetical order by surname. With each name, Hermione's name grew a little closer and her heart and feet grew a little closer together.

Then, the time came.

She stumbled up to the stall, fixing a smile on her face she was sure was faltering and feigning a confidence she did not feel at all. She flopped herself down onto the stall, anxious and overwhelmed but extremely excited, as the heavy hat was placed over her head. Her vision was restricted.

The hat mused to her about Ravenclaw and Gryffindor for a while before pausing and asking in its deep voice "Which do you think?" She was rather surprised to have it ask her opinion. She thought for a moment, considering the people she had seen enter each house thus far and those in the older years - she thought about the smiling Gryffindors dressed in their bright red and gold - and chose.

"Gryffindor!" The hat declared. With a single, unsteady exhale, she pulled the hat from her head and replaced it on the stool, walking on shaky legs to the cheering table. She heavily took a seat next to a tall, ginger, sensible looking boy who congratulated her with a kind smile as two boys who may have been his brothers cheered animatedly from across the table.

Then she set her eyes on the stage, watching the scared first years from an audience's point of view as they stood uneasily before everyone.

In a while, another familiar name came up.

"Kurosaki, Ichigo."

The boy she recognised walked over with the same unpleasant scowl as ever. Murmurs arose from the audience.

She caught a few.

"A Slytherin if I ever saw one."

"Three guesses which house he'll get!"

"Do we even need that hat here, McGonagall?"

Either he didn't hear them, or chose to ignore them. He sat down with no signs of disturbance, continuing to sit still as the hat was placed over his head. And here it sat.

For a minute that soon became two, then three, then four, then five, he sat there with that hat sitting on his head, covering his distinctive hair and unfriendly eyes.

Those who had murmured began to stare, wide mouthed and wide eyed - how could they be wrong with a face like that?

Then, finally, the rip that served as a mouth opened wide.

 **A/N**

 **Any guesses?**

 **Just to feed my own curiosity, does anyone reading this know their own Hogwarts house? If you do, please let me now!**

 **I'm a Ravenclaw myself - I have taken the Pottermore test thrice and got the same result three times, I think it's fair to say it's pretty accurate at this point.**

 **That's all I really have to say - so thank you all for reading, following, favouriting and reviewing. It means a lot to me. I hope you like the update.**

 **All the best,**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	10. Defying Expectations

"Hufflepuff!"

The word rung around the hall alongside a few yawns and a series of exclamations of surprise.

"I could have sworn he'd be a Slytherin! Just look at that face - how does that translate to Hufflepuff?"

"Did that hat make a mistake?"

"But if it took that long is it really an accurate sorting?"

It took a moment, but then the yellow table full of smiling faces and kind laughter became full of raucous applause as a slightly dazed looking boy walked down, scowl not easing but expression not particularly threatening due to the away-ness of his eyes. The hat itself, Hermione noted as the boy took his seat, looked just as confused.

The hat that had dug into her mind was sitting there, quaking slightly. She didn't know why, it looked as though it had been scared of what it had seen but what could that possibly be? That hat must have had that job for a millennium, surely there was nothing it hadn't seen?

Ichigo wasn't even sure what had happened. He sat there among the children dressed in the black robes, decorated with the yellow of their house, feeling the supportive, nice-natured hit on the back of a student much his senior but not really noticing it. There had been something in there, something he couldn't remember but had never seen before and wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to or want to see again.

His head hurt and he was more confused and uneasy than he had been before he knew where he stood in this school and whether or not he belonged there at all. He still really didn't feel like he belonged there; he was the outlier amongst a series of carefully programmed students who felt human, _just not like him._

The first years continued to move through the ceremony, person by person in alphabetical order by surname. Following two girls who shared the same surname, Patil, twins, harry finally came up to the stool, looking slightly green and staring at Ichigo through yes of the same colour for encouragement. He didn't get it: Ichigo was still staring at the woodgrain in the table as though it were the most interesting thing in the world, trying to puzzle out what had happened.

Breath quivering as it passed his lips, Harry sat down on the stool, glad to be able to relieve his shaking legs of the burden of holding him upwards. The hat was placed on his head, slipping down over his forehead and catching on his glasses for a moment before falling the rest of the way down over his eyes, restricting his vision to a swatch of faded grey and black, patched together with clearly visible stitching and occasionally broken up by specks of light that passed through the gaps in the stitches and the tears in the hat itself that no one had so much as made an effort to rectify.

The hat shifted, startling Harry a little as a deep, strange, old voice filled his head yet, somehow, not his ears. It felt as though that voice and the strange presence behind it was rifling through his brain, carefully searching for the things it deemed important.

Harry found himself thinking only one thing, repeating it like a broken record stuck on loop "Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin."

Then the voice in his head that did not belong to him laughed gruffly "Not Slytherin, eh?" harry confirmed the statement "Are you sure? You could do great things and Slytherin would help you get there!"

"Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin."

"You're sure?" It laughed again "Well then it better be…" It broke off for a moment of purposely suspense-filled silence "Gryffindor!" The final word was a verbal one, a statement that reached his ears and all the others in the hall.

He removed the hat that was obscuring his vision and stumbled off, down to the table full of laughter and cheering and yelling. He sat besides a couple of ginger boys covered in freckles, Ron's brothers. One of the twins hit him on the back rather hardly as he grinned and giggled. Harry looked over at the table besides theirs, at the familiar back-of-the-head behind him. He gently tapped the owner of the highlighter hair on the shoulder.

Ichigo was suddenly startled from the thoughts that were going nowhere by a gentle tap to the back of his shoulder. He turned faster than harry could protest and Harry found his wrist caught in the hand of his cousin. He laughed a little as people within the vicinity turned to look at the unlikely new Hufflepuff who was seeming less and less like he belonged to the house of badgers the more time passed.

"Guess I should have known that was a bad idea," Harry reasoned "What happened to you after that hat? I suppose it was pretty creepy, huh?"

"Beyond." Ichigo said as the image, blurred and indecipherable, passed before the eye of his mind again.

"Hey!" the older boy beside Ichigo, a few years older than them - two, perhaps - with the pale brown hair and the friends of plenty beside him, joking to each other began "Where are you from; you've got a bit of an accent?"

"Hmm? Oh, Japan."

"That's cool." he grinned before turning to Harry "Harry Potter, was it? How does our new friend here," He pat Ichigo on the back again "Know the Boy who Lived?"

"He's my cousin." harry answered for him.

"Really?" he looked surprised "You don't look alike."

"Thus," Ichigo began with a feeling of deja vu "cousins, not brothers."

"Fair enough!" He just didn't stop smiling "Cedric Diggory," He held out a hand for Ichigo to shake "I'm sorry, you're going to need to remind me of your name." He did genuinely seem apologetic for his forgetfulness.

"Ichigo Kurosaki." He reminded as he shook the offered hand.

"Tell me if you need help with anything, be it homework or directions!"

Ichigo wasn't sure why the boy was being so nice but Ichigo was beginning to grow less bothered by it, he was beginning to feel more welcome "Thanks."

"No problem." He smiled a final time and turned back to his friends who were quick to reinitiate him to their situation.

Then another familiar name was called.

"Weasley, Ronald!" It was obvious by his reaction, amongst the awkward shuffling caused by him being one of the last upon the stage, of wincing that he was not fond of being called by the long form of his full name.

He breathed deeply as he sat on the school, sending a fleeting glance back to the last couple of students who stood behind him still, one still perfectly stoic and the other looking as though their striking nerves were only increasing as Ron stepped forwards.

"A Weasley, eh?" The hat spoke aloud, and, despite only being a hat, seemed to smile through the long slit that seemed to function as a mouth "I know what to do with you!" Ron was shaking slightly "Gryffindor!"

He breathed out and managed, on quivering legs, to make his way down to his brothers, his new friend and the girl with the bushy hair and buck teeth, Hermione Granger, who was sitting amongst them.

The wizened old headmaster gave a speech that made about as little sense as the schematics of magic itself before waving a wrinkled, liver spotted hand in front of him, watching in satisfaction as plate after plate of food and pitcher after pitcher of drink appeared along the centre of each of the four students' house tables and the table at the front of the hall for the teachers.

Ron's mouth began to water as Hermione placed food upon her plate, sensibly and orderly, passing plates over to those who requested them upon occasion. Harry just stared, dumbfounded, his cousin right behind him doing the same.

Cedric noticed Ichigo had not, despite the rest of the first years having done so with minimal hesitation once they saw everyone from the older years doing so, begun eating.

"Are you okay?"

"Ahh, yeah. Just not used to it."

"To what?"

"This."

"That's not really an answer."

"I don't really have another one."

Cedric shook his head and sighed, disturbing the placement of his hair "Tuck in."

Ichigo looked around for a moment, scanning the food items on the table as he poured himself a glass of the thick, orange juice everyone was drinking from goblets at every table. He realised, with contrasting feelings, this was the first dinner he had had since the Dursleys had taken him in, not as their child or equal, but as a worker far inferior to them, this would be the first dinner he had in a while that did not consist of the cold left-overs of meal he and Harry had prepared a long while before.

Harry drunk deeply from his goblet, gulping down a large mouthful of cool pumpkin juice that soothed the rough, burning rawness of his throat that had occurred as a side effect of his queeziness. It was then, as they sat, backs to each other, absentmindedly staring at the moving scene of the ceiling far above, drinking and eating as much as they wanted, that they realised, properly, that this was real and they were here - they had escaped the Durselys, at least for a little while.

Everyone was sleepy after they gorged themselves on more dinner than was wise, topping off that large quantity with as much dessert as hey could stomach. It was a satisfying feeling, Ichigo thought as he walked, wandering the arm halls leading to the Hufflepuff dormitory alongside the rest of the crowd, Cedric still beside him, even if only out of coincidence, being full and comfortable for the first time since he could remember.

Of course, they would have dorms and the only person he knew in the house he had been assigned was Cedric - he would be rooming with strangers for as long as it took him to get to know them and, even then, there was no guarantee they would get along.

Led by the prefects, they arrived to a few barrels near the kitchen, the warm smell of comfort food and sweetness of the homely desserts could still be smelt, and were told a knocking pattern to enter their dorm.

The common room they entered into was round. The yellow and black that should not have made it nearly as cosy as it was instantly felt comforting to the number of sets of tired eyes that saw it. It was warm too, there was a fire blazing on the far wall, squishy armchairs placed around it, settees slightly further from the warmth of the fire, side tables and coffee tables dotted here and there, already littered with inkwells, old inkblots that had probably been there for about as long as the tables themselves, pieces of parchment strewn everywhere amongst a few textbooks. The Hufflepuffs who had been there for a year or more prior to that day had not wasted any time in making themselves at home.

Hogwarts was their home.

Ichigo hoped it would become his.

There was a sign on the door he had been directed to that declared it to be the correct dorm. He was, as far as he was aware after lingering in the common room for as long as he had, the last to enter.

There were four beds in the room, oud again, all but the one nearest to the door occupied by a chatting boy and whatever luggage, namely pyjamas, they had unpacked so far. The first was a fairly lanky boy, though not so much as Ichigo himself, with sandy blonde hair, bushy eyebrows and a kind, expressive face. Strands of hair fell out of place, crossing over ones they were not meant to and occasionally into his eyes.

The next was a much chubbier boy with intelligent dark eyes and gelled back hair that stayed set in place defiantly. The last was another boy with ebony hair that hung in distressed waves down to his shoulders. His smile was the widest Ichigo had ever seen and accompanied by a button nose that crinkled along with it and wide amber eyes.

"Nice to meet you." The first said as he walked over "I'm Ernie, this is Justin," The boy waved with a slight smile on his face "And Wayne." The boy's earsplitting grin didn't falter.

"Ichigo. Nice to meet you." It was, he decided, definitely the best idea to get himself acquainted and friendly with those he would share his house with "This mine?" he said as he patted the thick duvet on the last remaining bed.

"Yup! You don't mind getting the last one, do you?"

He thought back to the Dursleys', to the lack of room in the room he and Harry had to share and the broken toys and various other debris he dared not ask about Dudley had sternly prohibited either of them from moving that littered the floor and cut their feet if they didn't memorise the placement Dudley seemed to find fun in changing daily.

"Nah," He shook his head "Not a single bit."

They were all sleepy and did not take too long to fall asleep that night. Well, except for Ichigo who lay there, staring at the ceiling and fretting over the cousin who had allowed him both a sense of normalcy and belonging when he had been pulled into a strange, unfamiliar, unwelcoming environment as well as friend. He didn't know how Harry was doing, he just hoped he was doing well.

 **A/N So, here we go. Who guessed Hufflepuff? I know a lot of people were deliberating between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. You might be thinking "** _ **Why are there only four in the dormitory?"**_ **I could only find three names of Hufflepuff boys in Harry's year online and one had absolutely no description or images - have a guess which one! It's probably pretty obvious to be honest. So, I have Ernie Macmillan, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Wayne Hopkins and that is it. I didn't want to make up another character because I am awful at naming characters, 90% of unimportant or one-off characters I write of the male gender end up being called Edward, so I just thought we'd ignore that detail. No one minds, right?**

 **But seriously, how many reviews did I get last chapter? It was honestly insane - thank you! I want to thank anyone who has read, followed and/or favourited as well.**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	11. The World of the Wizard

Ichigo, unlike Harry, often woke up before the knocks and shrill, nonsensical shrieks of Petunia and was, as he woke up to the pale light of the sunrise just beginning to break through the gaps in the curtain, suddenly aware that he was the only person amongst his roommates that was used to being awake at such ungodly hours. He sighed to himself as he stretched and his joints popped, nether sound heard over the

almost comedically loud and consistent snores of the other boys as they continued to slumber on, showing no signs of stirring. Resigning himself to getting dressed into the awfully loose, heavy school uniform, he began to smell the cooking breakfast from the nearby kitchens.

Shoving his socks and shoes over his feet, he made his way into the common room, still empty of all other people.

A female prefect walked out from her own dorm a while later, pausing for a moment as she saw the first year she distinctly remembered from the sorting the night before - the one with the garish hair, the cold eyes, the Slytherin-esque face, and what must have been a record for longest time ever taken to be sorted. His scowling face, however, was not directed towards her, instead to the novel he held in his hands, old in a mundane way rather than by the Hogwarts definition, the pages slightly warped and the cover scratched.

She cleared her throat and he looked up as she had wished him to.

"Why are you up?" Ichigo just shrugged in response, unsure of what to say. She sighed, hands on hips but still smiling broadly "Come on, they'll be starting breakfast about now." She watched as he complied unsurely and rose to his feet, smoothing out his uniform before following, still feeling somewhat strange as he followed.

"I'm Amethyst," She said, pushing away a few strands of coily hair that had fallen out of place as they sat down beside each other at the grand table, followed by a small Gryffindor girl Ichigo knew. "Amethyst Dunn." She smiled again, flashing white teeth beneath subtly red-tinted lips "I'm the prefect this year so don't be scared to come to me or Gabe, gabriel Truman, if you have any questions."

He didn't smile back but the scowl eased a little "Ichigo Kurosaki," he introduced, it was the first time she had heard him speak.

They had been joined by Gabe about half an hour later as the table began to slowly grow in population, a few odd students scattered here and there, in groups not exceeding five.

"A first year is already awake?" he had asked the minute he saw Amethyst and the boy he would have had to have strained his mind to forget "On the first day, no less?"

"Yep." She had answered calmly as he took a seat and pile food item after food item onto his plate, creating a stack of breakfast foods before beginning to eat.

Ichigo had opted for the option of picking at bits of food laid across the table whenever he felt like it, making the amount he consumed appear to be less than he was sure it was if the fullness of his stomach meant anything at all.

When the rest of the boys from Ichigo's dorm walked down to breakfast, all clothed in robes they were stumbling over due to the remnants of sleep, the hall was nearing full but, in his wait for the schedule he had been told by Amethyst who had since left to reunite with the rest of her friends, Gabe included, Ichigo remained, tapping his blunt fingernails on the old wooden tabletop.

"Morning." he nodded as they filled in the space surrounding him, eyes still blurry and responses mumbled and muffled by yawns.

They woke up properly, however, as they ate. The conversation became alive. They were discussing people's experience within the magic community and who would know the most and least; they were talking about blood status even if they didn't wish to apply prejudice before it.

"I'm a Pureblood," Ernie explained as he leant on his elbows heavily, plate pushed away "But I really doubt I know any more than any of you have had the chance to learn. How about you, Ichigo?" he asked, thinking back to the previous night when the boy had been unperturbed to the point of oddness by the appearance of the ghosts, in a way no muggleborn could be.

Ichigo started, suddenly realising something he had not thought of yet. He drew his wand from his pocket and twirled it between his fingers as he fumbled around for a coherent response he had to eventually resign himself to being unable to give "I… don't know?" he began unsurely.

"What?" Wayne asked as he cocked his head to one side and the dark tendrils of his hair that were hanging in odd ways already fell over themselves.

"I don't know." Ichigo admitted with a bit more conviction and a shrug.

"How?" Justin asked, leaning closer to Ichigo from where he sat opposite.

Chigo flicked his wand though his fingers and back again. He exhaled. "My mum died when I was young, my dad never said anything and It's hardly like I can ask him anymore. Besides, apparently I know nothing about my mum anyway."

"Huh." Ernie said after a moment.

Harry overheard the conversation from the Hufflepuff table behind him mimicking their own and turned when he heard his cousin's voice.

"You really don't know," Harry turned on the bench, staring right at his cousin who sat behind Justin and across the table "All we know is that our mothers were sisters."

"And the surname I got from my mother should actually have been Evans. And that Masaki Kurosaki was not actually a person - Rose Evans, it's just weird."

Harry made a little murmur of agreement as Ichigo's roommates just stared at them as the contents of the conversation proved only to entirely bewilder them.

"I'm sorry," Ernie began "But what?"

That led to harry nudging Ron in the rib and both of them moving to the space the Hufflepuff first years had shifted to provide so harry and Ichigo could attempt to describe the situation to these people who had grown up in a magic environment yet were struggling to wrap their heads around the mundane oddities of their family lives.

"I give up!" Wayne conceded, raising his arms dramatically before falling forwards, arms impacting heavily upon the table top.

"Good," Ichigo shrugged as the bell chimed loudly, rising to his feet, picking up and crumpling slightly his schedule. "We have herbology - all of us." he gestured to his cousin and friend from the other house.

Ron sighed "How boring," as he pushed himself up to his feet, pushing his hair away from his face but not being bothered to tuck in his shirt that had promptly shifted from its place in the waistline of his trousers.

"At least my first lesson is with you." Harry shrugged as Ichigo offered him a hand up "You better not get us lost!"

"It's just as much your fault as it is mine if we get lost walking to a damn greenhouse."

"I s'pose."

They made their way through the halls, listening to their footsteps echo around the wide halls, and the paintings chatter in the large, old frames that were hung almost haphazardly to either side of them.

The halls began to fill a little more as they continued to walk, nearing the large, heavy doors they had realised as being characteristic for the old building. They walked out of the open door, into the cold of the outside, the damp of the air and the slightly overgrown grass that licked at the ankles of their trousers and, in Ron's case, the little sliver of his socks that were exposed.

In a moment or two, more first year Hufflepuffs and gryffindors, those unfamiliar with magic or with a particular liking for the subject looking excited, if perhaps, in the case of the former, a tad jittery, those who knew what was happening and, like Ron, were not too happy with the topic at hand walking with no particular intention to each step.

They were greeted at the entrance to the greenhouse by a stout witch with a face that, while not conventionally attractive, was certainly jolly and welcoming. She was dressed solely in earthy tones, her attire not particularly formal or well kept but certainly fitting for the archetype harry had constructed prior to their introduction of the herbology teacher.

She welcomed them into the greenhouse, full of plants, some that moved under their own jurisdiction. Some of the plants in the room were pretty in an unusual way, flowering in bright colours or strange shapes neither harry nor ichigo had ever deemed possible in nature, others somewhat grotesque and misshapen, formed in such ways it was almost an impossibility for their unaccustomed eyes to distinguish them as plants.

The air smelt just as strange as the odd classroom looked. Some plants smelled sweet and, as expected, flowery, there was a strong scent of soil and grass, among that the occasional tang of bitter unpleasantness wafting from plants overwhelmingly.

 _This was a wizarding lesson,_ Harry thought, catching Ichigo's eye as they both stared around, along with everyone else, _And I now have to get used to this._

He almost scoffed at the prospect of finding normality in something that so far strayed from it. He very much doubted it was an accomplishable task but he didn't really mind - he would never mind a bit of childlike awe and wonderment.

Afterall, he had been robbed of his own childhood - he had been bullied both in his house and school, worked for hours on end, trapped in a cupboard under the stairs, left to befriend the spiders with whom he shared a room.

He was sure, should the Dursleys have had any modicum of a collective sense of humour between them, this whole debacle was far too surreal to actually be happening.

It just so happened, luckily enough, they did not.

 **A/N**

 **This is kinda short - I promise most updates won't be.**

 **Do you know how utterly ridiculous school uniforms are? Let me clarify, it's been about 30 degrees here this week, and we have still had to bring blazers to school we haven't had to wear them and were told explicitly we didn't have to wear them into school, out of school, in lessons, between lessons, or at lunch or break, but we have to bring them in! Why? All that'll do is make us lose them! Also, some gross old men have decided that they would like to approach young school girls in uniform around the area my school is in and try to get them into their cars - multiple occurrences within the last week and, apparently, men of different descriptions.**

 **Then there's the boys' uniform! There was a news story recently about boys wearing their school's skirts (not because they wanted to, that really wouldn't make a news story) in protest to the school's lack of uniform shorts. At my school, boys were purposely ripping their school trousers, perhaps beyond repair and wasting the money spent on them, just so they could change into their PE shorts because it was 35 degrees on Wednesday!**

 **They do realise we'd work better if we weren't overheating, being strangled by ties, and worrying about having to walk home, right?**

 **I'll stop ranting now...**

 **Anyway, a serious thanks to you all!**

 **All the best,**

 **We'reAllABitOdd**


	12. What Great teachers(!)

The door to the classroom of Professor Minerva McGonagall burst open, loud and late, as the final two students came bustling in. Both wore the uniform of gryffindor, that of the taller in a significant state of disarray, and we breathing heavily as the hovered in the doorway.

Then the taller spoke,

"Thank God old McGonagall wasn't here! Can you imagine her face if we were late?"

The bright eyes of a cat with marks suspiciously reminiscent of glasses scrutinised him as he spoke.

Then the cat moved from the table with a leap, fluidly shifting in forms, melting into something that was certifiably _not_ a cat.

It was a woman, dressed in varying shades of emerald from her pointed hat to the very bottom of her flowing robe. The eyes had changed in colour but not at all in expression.

"Bloody brilliant!" Ron breathed, as though forgetting the sanction he would certainly be relieving.

"Thank you for that observation, Mr. Weasley," she responded shortly. A snigger of mocking bubbled up over the lips of a blonde slytherin, every part of him so pale as to appear near translucent.

"Now," she continued with a nod of her head "Perhaps I need to turn Mr. Potter or yourself into a pocket watch?" another snigger, though it was soon halted by a stern glare from the adult in the room.

"We got lost, Professor," Harry defended unsurely.

"Then a map, perhaps?" She shooed them to their seats as she returned to her desk to begin her lesson.

Meanwhile, a fair few floors below, the young Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws were having a less than enjoyable lesson in the dark, damp, musty dungeons.

"As there is little foolish wand waving in this class, I believe you will hardly consider it magic at all," the man's voice was much like silk, soft and gentle, quiet to the point at which it barely rose above a whisper. However, none of them missed a word, as though they were physically hooked on to each word.

"Most of you can surely not understand the wonder of the bubbling of a cauldron, the curling of rising fumes, the shimmer of a near-finished, the power of liquids that creep through the human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even put a stopper in death." the last part of his speech was sharp, spoken in staccato rhythm for no purpose aside from emphasis.

That is, he continued with a significant increase of volume but no less lengthening to the words that passed his thin lips "That is, if you're not as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

He very seemed to be trying to stir up an atmosphere of fear and respect around himself. But, to Ichigo who sat there examining the room, the only one who didn't seem at all scared by the man's speech, the only one who didn't hold breath in his lungs unnecessarily, they seemed too carefully rehearsed and revised, everything down to the infliction memorised meticulously. It took all impact out of them, there was no more intention, no emotion, behind the words he spoke.

Ichigo continued to observe the cold room that was never properly still, finding it both more interesting and intimidating than the man who addressed them. There were various things pickling in solutions in jars around the room, balanced on old shelves that didn't quite sit straight. The liquid in which they floated bubbled every few seconds as the floating things, an example of one being eyeballs that seemed disturbingly human, bobbed.

Eventually, he drew his eyes from the jar with the blue eyes, allowing them to settle on Wayne who sat behind him for only a moment, before moving them challengingly to the eyes of the teacher, as cold as the room but not as cold as his own when he schooled them as sternly as he was.

The man scrunched his eyebrows together, but did not speak. Instead, he broke the uncomfortable contact with his scowling student, and turned to the blackboard behind him.

Ichigo almost grinned, pleased that he was the reason behind this. The scratching of the chalk on the board was almost violent in nature, definitely angry. Trails of cursive writing continued along the dak of the board that camouflaged itself with the darkness of the room.

Snape was definitely making his writing at least semi difficult to read purposefully.

Ichigo sighed as he looked over at Wayne and began to look around the classroom as though the teacher had done his job well and actually bothered to tell them where abouts in each cupboard things were located.

He met harry again and lunch - both with a fair bit to complain about, the main being the lesson with Snape both had. That just proved Ichigo's suspicions: they had both been forced to suffer through the same, dull speech, just allowing Ichigo know he was right to have suspected it to be rehearsed.

But they had then split up to join their separate tables after, as the walked in from the humid outdoors, through into the grand space of the great hall that seemed larger than it was due to the enchanted ceiling that stretched up above them like the sky they had recently passed from underneath.

Ichigo remembered the girl from the sorting who had told them that, the bushy-haired girl who had quizzed them about the toad on the train, the girl who had done better than most of them in the herbology lesson both his class and hers had shared.

And there she was, sitting off to the side of the Gryffindor table, alone with nothing for company aside from the thick tome sat on the table in front of her, which her nose was currently stuck in. She looked a bit lonely.

Ichigo reached a hand behind himself, jabbing harry in the small of the back.

"Go speak to her," he told him, gesturing vaguely with his hand and hoping Harry understood.

Harry looked uneasy and fumbled his hands over the table as he shared an abundance of awkward eye contact with Ron between each fleeting glance at Hermione's back.

Ichigo sighed "Forget it," he gripped Wayne's cloak in his hand and made sure the rest of them all followed him over.

Harry squirmed as he watched his unapproachable cousin storm over to the small, buck-toothed girl purposefully.

Hermione was somewhat shocked as she watched the group of Hufflepuff boys fill the empty space on the table around her. She was even more shocked when she realised the leader of the group was Ichigo, from the train and the prolonged sorting.

"Hello?"

"Hi," he responded back dryly as he pulled a slightly crumpled muggle novel from his bag. She looked at the cover, unable to read the characters but still happy to know she was not the only one who enjoyed reading.

"Shakespeare's classics," He told her, noting her curious glancing.

Her face flushed as she realised she had been caught, growing redder as the others laughed.

"I'm sorry," She told them somewhat wearily "I can't recall your names…"

"Wayne," There was just as much expression in the boy's disorderly hair as there was in his animated features. She shook his hand.

"Ernie," the hand she shook was as bony and pale as the rest of his arm.

"Justin," he seemed somewhat quiet and his handshake was not the firmest or most confident.

"Nice to meet you all," She told them, deciding to close her book and engage the kind faces in conversation.

A less kind face was revealed from behind another book as a similar decision was made. But, for the first time, she didn't feel at all off-put by the disapproving expression - she had friends.

From across the Hufflepuff table, a girl with skin the colour of coco, and coily hair that would not sit straight, smiled as she watched Ichigo interact in a way that was almost normal by her standards.

From over her shoulder, Gabe leaned forwards and watched what she was. He cocked an eyebrow.

"What's got you so happy?"

"He is actually a Hufflepuff, huh?"

"Who?"

"Mister 'I even confused the sorting hat'."

He looked from her and back over again.

"Yeah, hufflepuff, definitely."

That was a fact he only served to prove a few days later, as the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws united for the first of their flight lessons.

They arrived to two rows of broomsticks facing each other and a stern looking teacher with a whistle slung around her neck on a lanyard.

"Everybody," SHe spoke loudly and clearly "Step up to your brooms and out your right hand up over it."

Ichigo almost walked into Wayne as he stepped to the side to allow his arm to stretch out to the side.

"Your other right," Ichigo hissed beneath his breath before the teacher could notice. Wayne's face adopted a pale shade of pink as he giggled nervously and hopped over the broom to take his place on the other side.

"Oops?"

"Yeah," he agreed "oops."

"Shut up."

"Now," the teacher, madame Hooch, continued "Shout 'Up!'"

"Up," Wayne was the first to shout. The broom rose a bit before driving itself backwards and jamming very intentionally into his knee cap. He stumbled and fell backwards.

"Ouch," There was a laugh beside him "Ichigo, Ernie, shut the hell up - I dare you to do better."

With a shrug, Ernie tried himself, but the broom didn't move, as though it were nothing more than a muggle cleaning supply.

"At least mine doesn't want to hurt me," he defended as Wayne allowed Ichigo to pull him to his feet, scowling jokingly.

"Ichigo," he continued "You try,"

"Sure," he sighed, not feeling as though the broom would listen, should the useless lolling around of everyone else's brooms be any indication "Up!" The broom hit his hand decisively in a moment, his hand reflexively clutching around it.

"How?" Wayne asked, leaning on his bruised leg.

"I'm just better than you." he deadpanned, ignoring Wayne as he felt the other boy's hand hit his arm.

"Up," Ernie called again. This time the broom rolled a little, perhaps rising a few inches, but it did not fly up.

"Up!" he called again, semi frustrated as he watched, after only a couple of attempts, Justin's broom unite with his hand. The broom rose to his knee cap before falling back to the floor.

"Up!" This time the broom rose all the way.

Hesitantly, eyeing the broom distrustfully, Wayne tried again.

"Up," he called, ginning smugly after a few attempts, after which he broom hesitantly flew upwards.

It wasn't a cold day, but it was a windy one.

"Right," Madame Hooch yelled again "Mount your brooms and wait for my signal!" she pursed her lips around her whistle, but a nervous girl he did not recognise kicked off too early, carried sideways by the wind, knocked into the wall, then down to the floor, before being carried by the teacher to the infirmary.

She left them with a warning:

"No one is to fly while I'm not here," She waved a stern finger before turning back to the whimpering girl who was hopping unsteadily along.

But then something went flying into the air, an ornate hair clip from the end of the braid belonging to one of the Patil twins; Ichigo could not remember whether it was Padma or Parvati that had been sorted into Ravenclaw.

She called after it, jumping up in futile attempts to grab it between her cupped palms, as the boys around her laughed and tear strayed from the corner of her eye.

"My sister got me that-"

With a sigh and very little comprehensible reasoning, Ichigo kicked off the grass and went flying after the little clip, as fast as the broom would carry him. He cursed at the extra drag of the excess material of his uniform, but caught the clip with a flip, right in front of the greenhouse a fair distance from the grounds over which they had been practising on.

"Geez," He looked down, not realising there may have been someone looking up "How did I go this far?"

He tucked the clip into his pocket and went back. The Patil girl smiled at him unsurely as he handed it back to her.

"Idiot," Ernie nudged him with a smile.

They spent the day believing he had gotten away with the blatant disregard to the rules, until Pomona Sprout approached them at the dinner table, drawing Ichigo away.

The kindly woman stared up at him, even at the tender age of eleven, he towered over her.

"You can save us, you can save Hufflepuff's quidditch team!"

She sounded excited; he might have too, if he had any clue what on earth quidditch was.


	13. Cursed Return

"Right," the voice that spoke was the kind yet firm tone of one Gabriel Truman, Quidditch captain, prefect, and overachiever extraordinaire "These are the balls Quidditch is played with."

He bent down to undo the clasp on the side of the brown case in which the balls were kept, looking at Ichigo rather than the case that appeared to be writhing. Then the bag popped open of its own accord.

Ichigo felt his hand tightening around the handle of his broomstick, to the point at which his knuckles looked to be as white as alabaster.

"This," Gabriel began as he picked up a mundane seeming ball from the case "is a quaffle - that's us chasers' jobs. We've got to pass this through the hoops on either end of the court that are being blocked by the opposition's keeper. You got that?"

Ichigo did get that, so he nodded. "Sounds simple enough."

Gab made to continue on his explanation, gently bouncing the leather ball in his hand, when he was interrupted by the approach of a tall, broad Gryffindor boy and Ichigo's own cousin.

The second Harry saw Ichigo, he looked up from the ground and smiled. Ichigo smiled back in return.

"What's this Truman," Oliver Wood began, hands placed on hips but face never devoid of slight smile "Has Hufflepuff got themselves a first year member too?"

"It would seem. We've got the cousins."

"This'll be fun."

Two pairs of eyes turned to face Ichigo and Harry as they discussed their understanding of the wizarding sport known as Quidditch, or lack thereof.

"So," Gabe turned back to Ichigo, this time including harry in the discussion as Wood watched with a smirk on his face "Let's pick up where we left off. This is the quaffle - it's our job as chaser's, that being mine and Wood's, to score with this. You needn't concern yourselves with it too much. There are only two balls you need to worry about."

Wood bent down and unclasped the quivering section of the case after a bat had been handed to the two rather confused first years with no explanation aside from a simple, humorous utterance of "You're gonna need those."

The instance the constraints were removed, a lively ball that flew straight to Ichigo.

Reflexively, Ichigo's arm moved and the bat made solid contact with the centre of the ball. He brought the bat through, feeling the weight of the ball on his right hand as he forced it forwards.

He dropped his arm back to his side a moment later, bat dangling from nimble fingers, watching the sphere as it sped away in a long, high arc.

Wood watched, hand pressed to brow-ridge as though he were a golfer watching his latest shot fly. Gabe whistled as he craned his neck, trying to keep his eyes on the disappearing ball.

"You sure you're not our newest beater?"

"You'd be a great one to have." Wood agreed.

"That's great - oh wait, I still don't have a clue what that means!" Ichigo crossed his arms across his chest as harry continued to stare in the direction the ball had travelled.

"We'll discuss that in a second." Wood confirmed as Gabe's hand pointed at the spherical object that was beginning to fly back to them.

"Here it comes," he said, stepping back from the case as Wood readied himself to receive the ball.

He restrained the ball back to its space in the case as Gabe continued.

"Those are bludgers,"

Wood cut him off - "Nasty little blighters!"

"They fly around the pitch trying to knock you off of your broom. It's the beaters' job to hit it away from their team and towards the other."

"And the last one?" Harry asked timidly.

The ball in question was tiny in comparison to the others, small enough to be able to fit in the mouth, gold and ornately decorated with translucent, fragile-looking wings to either side that fluttered rapidly, slowly lifting the ball from its place in Wood's hand. T then began to fly around sporadically with a buzzing noise, strongly reminiscent to a fly or bee. It flew around their heads, darted this way and that, fast and jerky in its movements.

"This is the golden snitch," Wod said as harry reached out to catch the ball hovering by his ear. It ended up held delicately between his thumb and forefinger, wings flapping once, twice more before dying out and drooping to the sides of the golden orb.

"This is your responsibility." he continued as Harry confusedly passed the ball.

"You've got to catch that," Gabe picked up, fumbling his school tie between his fingers, stained with chlorophyll and caked with the remnants of planting soil, specifically beneath his slightly over-long nails, from his herbology lesson the period before then "While the game is going on. The snitch is hard to see - see? It flits around the pitch so you've gotta be quick and sharp-eyed." Harry scrunched his nose as he subconsciously fiddled with the round glasses perched on it "When you catch that the game is over and you earn your team one hundred and fifty points. You'll almost always win."

Ichigo looked back from him to the animated ball, not sure which boy to look at when he spoke.

"Then what's the point?"

"Huh?" Wood was looking at him with one eyebrow raised.

"What's the point. If all you need to win is the snitch, why does the rest of the game exist?"

"Because you can win even without the snitch - seekers, what you are, often prefer to catch the snitch when they can, rather than letting the other team do so even if they won't win; if you catch the snitch when you're losing, you lose by less."

"I can't believe you two made the quidditch teams in your first year!" Ron exclaimed as he threw his freckled arms, draped in the thick masses of black fabric forming his school-uniform-cloak, fastened askew and slipping from his shoulders to a mild extremity, out to either side of him, striking Harry's glasses lightly, knocking them wonky.

Harry laughed and rubbed the back of his neck as Ichigo twirled his wad between his fingers as he had found to have become habitual in the short amount of time he had owned the elder marvel.

"It was luck," Harry told his friend as he fixed his glasses.

"No." Ron was defiant "I saw what you did. You were great harry - Ichigo, you must've been just as great if you got onto your team too."

"Well…"

Ichigo lay awake that night, staring at the ceiling as he watched the blurs of lighting and abnormalities in the overhead woodgrain form something akin to the image of a man, ornately and oddly dressed, riding a broomstick. He may have found that to be amusing or, perhaps, somewhat fascinating, but he knew it was only his sleep-deprived mind twisting the reality around him into something more desirable to his clouded consciousness.

But it was too loud to sleep. It was not the snores of his roommates that kept him awake, not the guttural noises that left their slightly open mouths in their sleep, but, rather, it was the screaming.

Ichigo had pulled the pillow up over his ears the second he began to hear it. But he knew, for the noise was loud to the point of deafening and shrill to the point of earsplitting, that he was the only one to hear the incessant wail, full of sorrow that made his chest ache as well as his pounding head.

The ghosts he had seen recently had been visible to everyone around him, but he was alone again now, as he lay in the dark, trying not to look at the figure that was making it.

Why?

Because that figure was terrifying, even by his altered standards.

He supposed it was once a girl but there was barely a remnant left of that existence aside from the fairly minuscule size and long hair. At least, what was left of it.

The ghost was coloured, unlike most, though much desaturated, entire being coated in thick films of crimson. The red matted her hair, already appearing to have fallen out, or to have been pulled out which happened to seem more likely as her scalp seemed to be emitting at least a proportion of the blood in which she was drenched,

Her face was more a series of slits and slices and scabs than it was a careful arrangement of features. Her skin was more alike to parchment than it was actual skin, hanging off of her as though it were too loose in many places, genuinely hanging in strings and strips, laced with gory viscera Ichigo wished not to focus on.

Her eyes were, to put it simply, lost to the void, the sockets intended to house them empty and dripping a viscous substance that looked, in the dim lighting, to be entirely black, the colour of tar. The droplets traced trails down her shredded cheeks like tears, running at a laborious pace, travelling over the bumps and curves of her face, dripping from raised points. Each track was easily traceable.

There was a component of the girl that reminded him tremendously of one of the school's ghosts.

Her neck was cut, slit in the centre, lines of dried post-scarlet decorating it, held in place by a few scraps of sinewy, ruined flesh.

Her lips closed, nothing more than small sections of flesh, just as torn as the rest of her, as her lone remaining hand knotted itself into the burned, tattered hem of her too-big tunic, the hand covered in purpling skin, violent red marks and blisters. Her legs were the same.

The screaming stopped as she opened her mouth again. Before a decipherable word came, there was a rough, hoarse rasp that grated on his ears almost as much as the screams had.

Ichigo looked right at her as she tucked one arm behind her back, bringing the other forwards, reaching it out before her with splayed fingers that bent in ways they should not have in a few instances.

Then, slowly, the rasp melted into a hissed sound, loosely resembling decipherable speech.

"You…"

Ichigo looked around, unable to ignore her any longer as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. The world spun before his eyes, blobs and blurs mixing to form a further slew of things that did not exist there, or, most likely, anywhere else.

His eyes landed concisely on her hollow sockets as she spoke a further word.

"Eat…"

He shook his head, eyebrows furrowed.

"Do you want to know if I'm hungry?" he knew that wasn't right and she confirmed it needlessly with a slow nod that caused her barely-attached head to wobble precariously.

"Are you hungry?" She nodded this time, catching her head as it fell.

"You want to know if I have an food?" He didn't think ghosts could eat, if they had working stomachs and other organs - surely those ceasing to work was a side effect of death.

Her head shook again, tilting with the movement.

Then she began to spin, a flurry of burnt fabric, tendrils of dark, matted hair, and strings of peeling skin.

But, the instant before she disappeared, she paused abruptly, facing him as though she could see, the dim light in the room being reflected by the substance around the eye sockets, almost making it seem as though there were some sense of humanity left there.

Then she fizzled and phased out of existence in a mere instant, like a computer game glitch. She reappeared, appearance altered but she was still certainly recognisable.

There seemed to be eyes, or something similar, there that time around.

But they were partially concealed by the white bone mask, decorated with streaks in the same colour as most of her had been stained, that sat on her face.

She said a single, final, parting word:

"Tasty…" As she flashed bloodstained, yellow teeth - no, fangs.

Needless to say, Ichigo didn't get any sleep that night.


	14. In Need of Assistance

The castle of Hogwarts was nothing short of an architectural marvel, full of fascinating twists and turns and enough space, much of it hidden and a fair expanse yet to be explored, to make one feel as though they were completely free as they walked for what could seem like eternity through hallways or across a great stretch of land bordered by the great forest that as restricted but not particularly enticing.

But, to one Ichigo Kurosaki, it felt more like a prison. He felt as though he were trapped in this echoey space where people were held away from one another, not allowed to leave, controlled by strict teachers who gave them very little room for lateral thinking or any other such things. There were restrictions placed on things that were allowed into the school and the use of the one thing they were there to learn was prohibited.

Not to mention he was trapped there, where the image of that girl had appeared, no way of escaping her or the school ghosts that, while very different from the ones he was used to, were constantly there and still seemed to look at him oddly.

The Hufflepuff Common Room, for all its warmth and homely comfort, felt alike to his cell, the dorm in which he spent a substantial amount of time and a seemingly endless slew of sleepless night akin to solitary confinement.

He may have wanted to run from Hogwarts but it was hardly as if he had anywhere to run to. It would be pure, unadulterated asininity for him to return to the Dursley household where his status as human was constantly challenged, before he was required to, and, even if he had a way to make a return to Karakura, what was there left waiting for him? A dead family? A house that was either still under police jurisdiction or sold off to someone else? Friends who probably didn't remember anything of him past his identity as that rough-around-the-edges delinquent with the hair his incapable father had allowed him to bleach so young as he had (how untrue!)? A plight of bad memories that would persistently nag at him if he dared set his eyes on that house of his, that murder scene of which he remembered so little? What did the Japanese legal system even know of his whereabouts; it would be nigh impossible to convince him laying a child to rest on the doorstep of their only remaining family was a proper practice under the jurisdiction of any law?

Maybe Hogwarts was comparable to a prison when he let the negativity stew in his mind, but freedom would likely only lead him to be destitute.

He didn't doubt himself, sitting there at the table for Hufflepuff early, yawning into his hand as he could smell the pleasant aroma of the food he had yet to eat a bite of, when he decided imprisonment was the lesser of evil amongst the two proffered.

He may have sat there for longer, but there was a noise, rather loud, as someone heavily took a seat across from him. Still accustomed, even after a time as long as it had been, to his father's old way of waking him up, the noise instantaneously attracted his attention.

It was just Wayne, hair like a bird's nest due to the way his sleep had dishevelled it, smiling at him from across the sparsely populated table. The great room surrounding them seemed awfully empty, Ichigo observed for the first time, echoey and seemingly homogeneous to a cavern with its barrenness.

"Excited?" Wayne asked in that usual upbeat, chipper tone of his that Ichigo never understood how he managed to keep up at all hours of the day.

Through yet another yawn, Ichigo answered blearily "For what?"

"Honestly?" Even in exasperation, the positivity that rang throughout the boy's words never once faltered "You're on the quidditch team and you don't know? I guess you're lucky isn't our game! Gryffindor vs Slytherin today - your cousin's playing!"

"Oh,"

"Oh," Wayne shovelled a large amount of food into his mouth, chewing a few times before swallowing and continuing "That's all you have to say? Oh?"

"I guess so…" Ichigo couldn't remember picking up the fork, but he felt its cold weight present in his hand and could definitely hear the shrill squeaking noises it made when he, in pushing his food around with no real desire to eat it, pushed the utensil too hard against the plate.

"That's enough of that." Wayne decided abruptly, bringing himself up onto his feet and reaching across the table to remove the fork from Ichigo's slack grip.

It was apparent he didn't care very much, he just moved on to fiddling with a loose thread in the sleeve of his shirt.

"Okay," Wayne began a while later, after he had finished the food on his plate and was beginning to grow uncomfortable with the silence, seeming to increase in weight and palpability with each passing moment it lingered between them "I'll bite: what's up with you today?"

"Sleep deprived," Ichigo shrugged, looking over Wayne's left shoulder rather than at his face, observing the Gryffindor banner with disinterest evident on his face.

"You've been sleep deprived before," Ichigo blushed a little at that, recalling just how often he spent nights in that dorm room wide awake, often just staring up at the ceiling, other times reading or getting homework done early. He supposed his rummage for books or writing supplies might have made some sort of noise that may have woken Wayne whose bed was right beside his own "You seem different."

"No?"

"You honestly need more sleep."

"Hey, it's hard to maintain both a reputation as a delinquent and a near-model student."

"The thing is," Wayne began as the doors to the hall opened and his words were dampened by a new round of raucous, not intense but much easier to hear than the vacant silence that had occupied the space only moments prior "you said that with so little emotion don't know if you were joking or not."  
"And you're not going to."

Wayne sighed.

The quidditch match had been fantastic to watch from the old elevated stands. Or at least it had been until Ichigo had to watch his cousin's broom act as though it had a vendetta against its rider, bucking this way and that until Harry was left dangling from it, arms trembling as they struggled to hold him in place.

The Snape, as the rumours said, had gone up in flames of an unknown origin and the enchanted broom had, once again, found itself harry's total control. With skinny arms Ichigo knew got very little exercise beyond carrying plates and school supplies around, Harry, with no small amount of difficulty, managed to heave himself back onto his broom.

Somehow, Harry had managed to catch the snitch in his mouth, winning the match for Gryffindor. Ichigo was glad, not only because his cousin had one the first quidditch match he had ever played, but because he disliked Slytherin. It wasn't the idea of the house he struggled with, cunning did not necessarily amount to evil, but the house had a reputation that preceded it and left those willing to become part of it to be people who were not particularly pleasant to make an acquaintance of.

The next day, after Ichigo finally found a place to belong in the land of sleep even if he had, upon waking, for a mere second, seen that mask of bone, sharp, yellowing teeth gnashing behind it animalistically.

His first lesson that day was charms, a lesson held by the shortest teacher the school had to offer, but, in Ichigo's opinion and, from what he could infer, many others', one of the best, perhaps tying with McGonagall and followed not too distantly by Sprout, whose subject, while perceived as something of a niche amongst students who had less interest in the magical world of plant life, was taught exceedingly well.

The teacher in question, Professor Filius Flitwick, conducted the lesson from his usual place atop a rather large stack of books that stood behind his desk in place of the usual, predictable chair.

That day's lesson, he had promised in the last lesson of theirs, was to be their best yet, or at least he thought so and much hoped they would. It was their first practical lesson on the topic, the first time they would be casting actual charms.

Ichigo sat at his usual place, Ernie, his partner, on his right, perched eagerly on the edge of his seat as his narrow face was consumed by a grin Wayne would have been proud of but could not see from where he sat.

Ichigo's wand was twisted in a semi-nervous manner between nimble fingers that were perhaps the slightest bit shaky. He had, he believed, only cast a single spell with that wand, in their first transfiguration class when they had been instructed to turn the matchsticks supplied into needled. When he cast the spell, he supposed it did technically count as a needle even if the product would serve better purpose as a weapon than an implement in sewing. Even the professor had looked at him, as the bright light, much lighter than it should have been dissipated, leaving him with the result that should have been impossible.

Now he was going to try again and hope nothing worse happened.

They were told to levitate the feathers put on the desks in front of them, something he doubted he could mess up too badly. Surely the worst potential outcome was just complete failure to make the large, white feather he could see being used in a quill move?

Holding the wand before him after Ernie's initial failed attempt to make it budge, he allowed his voice to join the semi-indistinct chorus around him.

"Wingardiam leviosa," the feather began to glow just like his needle had. That wasn't meant to happen. The light did not dissipate, instead growing in intensity and attracting the keen gaze of everyone in the class who stared upon it in wonder. Then, without warning, the light died and the feather leapt upwards, not following the movement of Ichigo's wand which had, in fact, not moved at all from its place held straight out before him.

As it flew upwards, it became evident there was no halt in sight and the fragile feather made contact with the ceiling, imploding upon impact and showering the entire classroom with more ash than such a small, delicate thing should have been able to produce.

Flitwick cleared his throat with a sound something alike to a choking sound, high in pitch.

"Well, Mr Kurosaki, that was good just…." he ran a hand through his hair "Just less power next time. Please." the final word was somewhat feeble.

Ichigo's head found a friend in the desk he laid it heavily upon.

"How do I do that exactly?" he asked the ashy desk right before his face, staring at the wood grain as though he expected to find the answer in that natural pattern.

It would be an understatement to say Filius Flitwick was surprised to see a familiar face at his office door after the end of lessons that day.

He was expecting the bo to be asking questions about the assigned homework from the lesson before that day's but the boy merely mutely handed across the parchment Flitwick had requested of his class.

He cleared his throat again.

"Mr. Kurosaki," he addressed the first year who was fairly tall for his age generally, especially to him but not exclusively "What can I do for you?" he noticed with a bit of amusement the boy still had traces of ash in his inhumanly bright hair that were, due to the contrast, near impossible to miss.

"I need help," the aforementioned boy told him flatly.

"With what? Would it not be more appropriate to approach your head of house with any queries you may have about life at Hogwarts?"

He shook his head so decisively, Flitwick took the slightest stumbling step back.

"Then, what is this problem of yours exactly?"

"I need help with my magic. The charms teacher seemed like a pretty appropriate place to head."

Filius Flitwick, while taken aback, was happy with the proposed challenge of helping a struggling student. He was a teacher for a reason: this was what he lived for.

"Come in, come in." he ushered the young Hufflepuff into his office with a smile, instructing him to take a seat and bring out his wand.

"Now," Filius began "I'd like to make sure these extra lessons won't interfere with your formal lessons. You could be spending this time doing your homework and I want to ensure you have other time, especially since you are on the quidditch team, in which to complete it before we begin."

"I do," Ichigo responded calmly "I am currently completely up to date with homework and will not struggle to stay this way."

"Good good!" Flitwick took his own seat at last "Let us begin!" Ichigo couldn't help but think the man was perhaps a tad too excited, especially because both of them were well aware Ichigo, with his lack of control, was sure to tear up the poor man's office.

It was a fair and definitely correct assumption. How one managed to mar a wall, a mark that would have been inarguably permanent without the aid of magic to clean it, with a burn, send hairline fractures creeping across the window and completely rearrange the placement of the entirety of the room's furniture with only a simple levitation spell was a mystery to them both.

Filius Flitwick, despite his confusion, couldn't help but think of the first year, seemingly cold but clearly clueless when it came to the term restraint, as a project. After all, who wouldn't love to boast about being the factor that aided the rise of a wizard as great as the amount of sheer, unrestrained power present in the boy suggested he was capable of being?

 **A/N**

 **I'm sorry this is so late, I just couldn't figure out how to start it. I'd like to mention that I'm having the quidditch happen earlier than it actually would rather than having that lesson be really late. We'll consider that a practice match, okay?**

 **So, I quite like Flitwick (maybe because he's head of my house and I'm biased?) and thought I'd give him something of a role to play for the time being.**

 **Fun fact: I am writing this while listening to Hunter Hayes, Invisible, on repeat and this is like the only country song I like, because, while there are things I'd certainly choose country over (*cough cough* Horrorcore *cough cough* death metal *cough cough*) and my complete lack of a music taste (play 'All of me' or 'Can you feel my heart?', I love them both) I just don't like country. I don't know why.**

 **A huge thanks as always to anyone who has supported me in writing this story in any way what so ever, it means an awful lot to me.**

 **All the best,**

 **We'reAllABitOdd**

 **PS let's appreciate the fact that, if I miss the capital at the beginning of Ichigo because, as I'm sure we're all aware, I cannot type (I'm almost as bad as bloody Shin (from eyeshield) with technology, I swear!) my correction software wants to change it to echo because they're just so overwhelmingly similar!**


	15. Fading Loneliness

The Hufflepuff common room and dorms were consistently warm and homely but they had never felt more so than that morning in late October. The air that surrounded the inhabitants was a comfortable temperature that didn't stifle, carrying with it the scents of the fall around them, the gentle hum of spices, most prominently cinnamon, as well as a subdued tang of the pumpkins most likely being carved and cut up in the kitchens not far from the dorms

Ichigo forgot where he was when he woke up that aforementioned morning, knotted amongst his sheets with Kaidah peacefully sleeping over his legs. The sounds of snoring from his roommates filled the room like some sort of strange backing track . Then he blearily pried his eyes open and he remembered right as, with a final snore that melted into something much stranger, Ernie went crashing to the floor, a single foot tied in his own sheets, remaining on the bed.

Not even bothering to hide the laughter that rose in his throat, still rough from sleep, Ichigo made his way over to the boy who lay on the floor, groaning a little bit as he fumbled drowsily to free himself from the tangles of his sheets.

"Morning," Ichigo commented dryly as he pulled on a bit of sheet and the knots unravelled themselves.

"Morning," Ernie scowled, only deepening, though still not nearly as severe as Ichigo's usual expression, when Justin and Wayne, awoken by the crash he had made as his back had unforgivingly slammed to the ground, began to join Ichigo's laughing, near enough barking in their malicious joy.

Ernie crossed his arms and stuck out his lower lip as he stared at his friends, only looking away from chortling faces when he felt a pressure appear on his legs. He looked down at bright eyes that seemed to glow in the dim light that filled the room, passing through cracks in curtains from outside.

"Ichigo," he said loudly in order to be heard over his roommates "Your cat is nicer than you."

Ichigo felt no need to respond, only letting Ernie know he had been heard with a subtle nod that would have been missed without attention payed.

They sat in their common room for a while before breakfast, talking about their plans for the upcoming winter holiday they were eager for the coming of.

Ichigo felt as though he had actually managed to make friends in the strange world of the wizard, perhaps for the first time since his arrival. He, as the sun began to rise, began to think of how Hermione, someone else he was sure none of them would mind calling a friend, was doing at that moment.

* * *

Hermione Granger had a good morning but everything changed.

She had done nothing wrong as far as she could tell, only correcting in hopes of aiding, but then those words hit her like an attack.

"No wonder she doesn't have any friends!" the voice exclaimed as she passed, Ron's companion not arguing his point, only making a comment when she ran past them towards the largest part of the building, trying to stop the tears stinging her eyes from spilling over her cheeks.

"I think she heard you," The boy's young voice was gentle but it seemed to rip at her like sharp claws.

It stung a lot more that she knew, as she shoved the door open and dived into a toilet stall, head buried in her hands, they were right. She didn't really have any friends, she didn't talk to anyone outside of lessons besides the first year boys from Hufflepuff who would approach her when she was alone. She was sure they didn't think of her as a friend, they had all been sorted into Hufflepuff for a reason, they were meant to be nice.

From under the little gap in the bottom of the door, she watched passing feet, clothed in black leather shoes that tapped a steady rhythm on the tiles, choking back audible sobs that caught in her throat, lodging themselves in place and making her feel like she had swallowed a billiard ball.

She didn't even register the emptiness of her stomach and even the aforementioned feet, through a veil of tears, became blurred and indecipherable.

In fact, there was nothing that could draw her from her own thoughts until that bang sounded and the rough growl drifted quietly on the air that filled the room, so soft she thought she had imagined it. She really wished she had when she stepped out of the stall, eyes stinging and nose running, and saw what she, while she could easily recognise it, call a monstrosity.

* * *

Harry felt beyond guilty when he heard about Hermione's whereabouts, especially when he knew her crying in the bathroom was at least partially his fault.

He couldn't enjoy the rich food that travelled down his throat too slowly, the wash of pumpkin juice that seemed to freeze him from the inside out as he gulped it down in a futile attempt to drown out the dryness that filled his mouth like a disease.

However, he was pulled from the thoughts that clouded his brain like a thick shroud of smog by the worried shout of a cracking voice that passed through the slowly opening doors to the great hall.

"Troll! Troll in the dungeon!" It chorused until the hall was drenched in silence and all eyes were turned to the scrawny, pale, turbaned form of Professor Quirrell who seemed to sway as he meekly let a final sentence pass his lips before his face became acquainted with the cold, hard ground.

"I thought you ought to know,"

It seemed as though the hall was put on pause for a moment before suddenly lurching into fast forward.

In all the surrounding commotion and the attempts at consoling words from the teachers at the front of the hall that were beginning to cause the students to settle slowly, Harry and Ron made to sneak away through the slightly opened door Quirrell had passed through.

However, Harry was halted by a firm, slender hand on his arm that held him in place with what he considered to be too much ease due to the way he was struggling. He turned around quickly and looked up to see a familiar face staring down at him with the usual scowl. The moment he made eye contact the hand on his arm was removed, falling naturally back down to his cousin's side.

"Where are you going?" Ichigo asked.

Harry tried to match his cousin's expression despite his prior knowledge he could not do it justice as he attempted to lookup without ruining the facade he was trying to create around himself.

"To find out what's happening," Harry declared, voice quick as he tried to hurry up the conversation in an attempt to exit the hall quickly.

"Not without me you aren't," Ichigo responded decisively, long legs striding forwards quickly as Harry made to hurry after him.

Along with Ron, they slipped through the door and waited, hidden, for the teachers to to do the same.

They followed the teachers silently until they came to a halt.

Peering around a corner just slightly, they listened, straining their ears as they watched the teachers talk, splitting off bit by bit to go and deal with the troll, eventually joined by Dumbledore who informed the few that were left the troll had since moved from the dungeon to the first floor.

As Harry heard the words pass the bearded old headmaster's lips, he felt his heart skip a beat, falling downwards into his stomach.

He turned to his friend and cousin and whispered breathless words. "Hermione's on the first floor!"

Ichigo didn't waste a moment in running down the hallway, footsteps still silent, as Ron and Harry rushed to catch up to him. Harry found himself out of breath quickly, his muscles aching due to lack of practise.

The second he set foot onto the first floor he could smell the, mildew-ey stench that permeated the air. A number of seconds later he saw the thing radiating the unpleasant scent.

It was a mountainous creature with humanoid anatomy yet warped in strange ways. With stumpy limbs and oddly-clawlike hands that were mismatched to wide feet that vaguely resembled those of an elephant as well as ears like satellite dishes that stuck out decisively to either side of the rather dim, unattractive face that was topped with neither eyebrows nor hair. It wore a roughly cut loin cloth and vest Harry was rather happy it possessed, worn over skin of a sickly cool grey colour that was covered with lumps and callouses that would likely feel like sandpaper to the touch. In its hand it held a roughly carved wooden club that was both much larger than them and, in its roughness, had several spikes of wood that could, if broken off, be used as makeshift weapons

It was a bit of a blur, but the creature, the Mountain troll, came running at them as though somehow provoked, making a long low sound that rang in Ichigo's ears as he leapt away from the oncoming attack. His movement prompted Harry and Ron to do the same; Ron, struck by a sudden apparent stroke of genius, dived to the side, where a nondescript door was and purposely made himself a target. The troll seemingly just as stupid as the look it wore would suggest, came right at him as he jumped away with a shriek louder than the inconsistent roar of the approaching troll.

The troll went barrelling through the open door Ron slammed decisively shut behind it. He fell back against the wall with shaky limbs and heavy, relieved breaths.

However, his relief was short lived as a high, shrill shriek pierced the air like a blade. Before he could register anything, two mismatched feet appeared right beside him.

"Hermione!" Ichigo called, recognising the voice in an instant.

"That's the first floor bathroom!" Harry exclaimed as he pulled Ron to his feet and Ichigo shoved the door open.

The room was destroyed, porcelain sinks smashed one by one as Hermione scampered between them, hiding underneath one until it was about to be destroyed and she had to move on to the next.

Without thinking, Ichigo ran over to Hermione, protecting her from the troll with his own body, making sure if anyone got hurt it would be him.

Harry, unfortunately, did not get the same protection. The troll saw him and reached out before he could run, encircling him in its clawed hand and lifting him from the ground in its tight vice grip.

Ron saw what happened and did the first thing he could think of, yelling the first spell that appeared in his brain.

"Wingardium leviosa!" he called as loudly as he could, watching with relief as the club that was about to come down on his best friends head went flying up into the air, slipping straight from the troll's hand and making its face contort into confusion. The club fell upon the troll's head, weakening both its consciousness and grip.

Harry clambered out of the trolls hand, running across the floor besides where it had heavily fallen, wand in his hand as he sprinted without any semblance of a plan in his adrenaline-powered mind.

Ichigo too ran forwards, reaching down to grab the splintered bit of wood from the ground as he approached.

Harry mindlessly stuck his wand up the nose of the steadily awakening troll who was struggling and coming near to throwing the boy off. Ichigo wasn't going to let his cousin get hurt if he had anything even resembling a say in the matter.

He knew he still wasn't good enough to magic to help in a way that would be sensible for a wizard, even if he had managed to improve somewhat. The stick of sharp wood in his hand he was sure was cutting into his palm at least a little bit seemed to be his only option at that moment and there was no way he wasn't going to try.

The troll was back on its feet, Harry hanging from his wand, screaming as he struggled to stay off of the floor far below. Ichigo looked up for a second before stabbing the wood through the leg of the beast. It fell once again, denting the floor as it descended with both a thud and a roar.

Ichigo gabbed his makeshift weapon back and decided not to watch as the blood, a sickly green in colour, poured from the wound like a waterfall. The roar faded in little time, a large bump on the back of the troll's head serving its purpose to knock the creature into a much deeper state of unconsciousness than before.

Then the door to the bathroom opened and the teachers came rushing in, faces held in looks of worry that instantly made all of them very nervous about what was to come.

 **A/N**

 **Hi! It's me and I'm not dead. I'm really sorry about the eternity this has taken, I have quite a few stories but I do usually try to get stories updated in under two weeks. But I was on holiday so I couldn't write anything, sorry.**

 **I'd like to thank AmericanArcher for beta-ing this for me and anyone who is reading this for being patient with me and just for reading this.**

 **All the best,**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	16. Olivia Irvine

As McGonagall's sharp, dark eyes met his Ichigo promptly released the makeshift weapon from his hand. It clattered to the floor with a noise that seemed louder than it was in the otherwise silent setting. McGonagall narrowed her eyes,thin eyebrows lowering atop them as her lips split from one another. Ichigo felt something warm trickling down his hand slowly, trailing down his fingers as his hand hung limp to his side.

"What is going on here?" her voice was far more shrill than usual "Miss Granger, explain what they are doing in here and why the troll is on the floor."

Ron's face crumpled, looking downtrodden like they were already doomed. The grim face Snape wore like a mask as he stared at the young Weasley, almost through him, wasn't helping.

Ichigo couldn't tell whether Ron had perked up or felt his heartbeat become irregular as his face changed when Hermione began her answer.

"It was my fault professor." she spoke with an uncomfortable unease that further alerted the boy to her unfamiliarity with lying to authority figures "I've read about trolls," her eyes were focused downwards, on her twiddling fingers and the shattered floor tile she stood on rather than the harsh face of the one she was addressing "And I thought I could take it on. Harry, Ron and Ichigo came to help me - it was all my fault."

McGonagall looked taken aback "Well, Miss Granger, I expected better of you! 10 points from Gryffindor." Hermione's eyes went lower "And, Mr.Potter, Mr.Weasley, Mr. Kurosaki, 5 points each for sheer dumb luck!"

The teachers then left, the students not far behind, after Snape sent a look that lingered somewhere in the space between disapproval and contempt to the group of first years who were honestly bewildered by his seeming hatred towards them.

Ichigo stepped into the hallway, relishing the absence of the pungent stink of troll that permeated the bathroom. Harry stood to his side, breathing heavily with a combination of exhaustion and relief.

"we got away with it." Ron stated, staring dumbly forward with absent eyes. "we got away with it," he chorused blandly again "We got away with it!" and, just like that it was as though he had awoken from a trance.

Harry and Ichigo nodded as they stared at the retreating backs of their professors then behind them at a limping Hermione who was peppered with bruises and scrapes like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

"Here," Ichigo put his hand on her shoulder and helped her forwards "you'd best get to the medical wing."

"So had you." Ron told him before he could take another step.

"huh?"

"you're bleeding and it looks like you have some of that wood left in your hand."

"oh." Ichigo said dumbly as he suddenly became aware of the warmth across his hand and the steadily spreading smear of red he was leaving on Hermione's tattered robes.

He and Hermione began on their way but stopped when Ichigo halted mid-step, looking over his shoulder with eyes that looked as though the emotion had been flushed out of them.

"you two better not be so stupid again." he warned cool before continuing onwards towards the infirmary.

As they got closer, Ichigo began to be able to feel the sharp sting of his hand, the splinters being driven in further as he kept his hand pressed gently on a limping Hermione's back, as the adrenaline from the debacle began to drain from him. He grit his teeth and clenched his hand, probably not the smartest of actions to have taken.

Hermione stopped then.

"Are you okay?" She asked, looking up with curious, worried eyes.

"Yeah, don't worry."

"If your hand hurts, you don't have to help me, you know?"

"I'm helping you." he insisted, watching her tentatively limp a few steps forwards. He stepped to her other side, put his good hand back onto the spot, stained red, where his other hand had previously been, and continued to guide her onwards, up the moving staircase that would take them to Madame Pomfrey.

The second ichigo had his hand magically fixed he sprinted from the wing faster than Hermione could bid him goodbye. He had almost forgotten. It was meant to be his first formal Quidditch training session with the Hufflepuff team and he was going to be late!

He ran down the corridor then practically flung himself down the staircase as it was mid-shift. He landed a few steps down, bending his knees before jumping down a few more, then repeating until he leapt of the last few in the few seconds he had left before the bottom of the staircase would spin around, over a far deeper drop.

Ichigo was fast but he had no idea where he was going from that point. It seemed as though the Halls of Hogwarts had shifted and rearranged themselves since he had last traversed them and, at that moment, he wanted nothing more than a map.

He was only hung up further when he passed the little poltergeist that floated above him, right near the ceiling, he was dressed in the same oddly assembled outfit as always, the same mischievous glint ever present in his dark eyes. Ichigo couldn't help but feel as though he was being scrutinised by those blacked out eyes, like the wide smile that spread across the small face was masking sinister intentions.

"Ickle firsty," the high pitched, uneven voice cackled, the figure floating down from the ceiling "Where are you going?"

Ichigo wanted nothing more than to be able to ignore Peeves, to walk past him dismissively, but every step he tried to take was blocked by the little poltergeist.

"Answer me," he smiled wider "Wait a moment, aren't you that firsty everyone keeps calling the sorting hat's mistake-" But he was cut off by a loud shout from across the hall.

"Peeves!" It was two voices that merged together to create one with a slightly odd quality. But, more than anything, it was a vaguely familiar chorus. Ichigo looked over to the source of the noise, finding two students not much older than himself standing defiantly at the opposite end of the hallway, just descended from a set of stairs that had not been there when Ichigo arrived.

The poltergeist sped away with a sheepish nod at the orange-haired twins that stared him down with stern eyes that changed, dissipated into something much more kind and mischievous the second he had left.

"Weasleys…" Ichigo vaguely recalled, guided in the decision by the ginger of their hair, much more subtle than his own bright orange and the freckles that adorned pale skin.

"Fred and George." They told him, still smiling "You're Harry's cousin Ichigo, right?" ichigo had to curse his own incapability to remember names as he nodded.

"Hey, sorry - I have to get to Quidditch practice…" He told them as he slowly turned on his heel.

"No worries, we have to run or Filch will catch us."

"Why are you running from Filch?"

"Ask no questions and we will tell no lies." they left with those final cryptic words.

Ichigo ended up being late to Quidditch practice in the end. It probably wasn't the best of impressions for him to make on the majority on the team and he had been worrying about their reactions to him.

It turned out it was all for nought. Ichigo had forgotten they were Hufflepuffs, members of the house known for their kindness.

It was as though his lateness meant nothing. They greeted him with friendly smiles and hugs he found uncomfortable but they saw nothing wrong with. He was given robes and passed the best of the broomsticks from the school's shed. There were a few sticks of straw pointed in odd directions but nothing too major.

"Ready for practice?" Cedric slid up to Ichigo's side, asking him the question with a smile.

"Yeah, I guess. When do we start?"

"When our last, constantly late chaser shows up."

"Constantly late?"

"She always gets lost."

"Should I go see if I can find her, I'm an expert in getting lost myself."

"Go ahead, we need her. You'll know her when you see her, she'll be ready for practice even if she isn't here."

"Right." Ichigo nodded before running back into the grandiose building and desperately hoping he would not run back into the annoying poltergeist that haunted the school halls with nothing more sinister than juvenile pranks.

He paused after a moment, looking up and around him at all the possible places where this girl might be. He twirled his new quidditch robes between his fingers, pulling them tight around himself, as he stood there and observed.

Then he saw her.

There was a girl, a few years older than him, wandering around on the floor above looking hopelessly confused wearing the yellow Quidditch robes he had recently donned himself. He ran up the stairs with less determination than he had the stairs he had desperately flung himself down before.

He met her at the top where she just stared at him for a moment. He stared back.

He guessed she was maybe in her third or fourth year. She was slightly shorter than him, but nothing more drastic than a few minor inches. Her hair was orange aswell but, as always, not nearly as bright as his own. She had wide brown eyes, her long hair pinned back and away from them with flower pins at either side of her head.

"Cedric is looking for you." He told her after a moment.

"Oh!" Her voice was just as soft and girly as her appearance but Ichigo doubted it was a good idea to underestimate her "He sent you to look for me?" She giggled, slightly nervous and uncomfortable "Sorry."

"It's fine, I was a little late too."

"You're that first year, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"Ichigo was it?"

"Mmhmm."

"Nice to meat you, I'm Olivia." She smiled and offered him her hand.

He followed her down the stairs. The surname printed in black on the back of her flowing quidditch robes was Irvine.

"Oh," Cedric began when they returned "Kurosaki, I guess you found irvine then." ichigo nodded "Good. We can start then. Ideally we would have had a few team practices already but Slytherin and Gryffindor always seem to have the pitch booked. You confident you know how to play?" he checked, despite having personally mentored him in the ways of Quidditch for the past month or so.

"Fairly."

"Good."

They made their way onto the pitch and began to play miniature games amongst themselves, teams an even split between starting members and substitutes.

After Ichigo managed to clasp his hand around a final snitch, once again beating the short, scrawny substitute second year to it, they dismounted from their brooms, out of breath, and made their way off the pitch.

They walked in a cluster back up the the Hufflepuff common room, meeting a fair few students who were sat by the blazing fire in the old, comfortable chairs that easily sunk beneath the weight of even the lightest person. Ichigo smiled at Wayne as he sank heavily into the chair next to him, watching the boy's scrawl slowly fill the parchment he slowly scratched his quill across.

"What homework is that?" Ichigo asked, looking at the page of writing he knew he had no chance in reading. The rest of the quidditch team was slowly trickling off into their dormitories to change into pyjamas and go to sleep.

"Charms." Wayne answered easily, pausing his writing for a moment. Ichigo watched as a blob of black ink fell to the parchment. "You're lucky," he continued with a dismissive wave of his hand and the parchment he was holding in it. The blob of ink ran across the page, branching out and obscuring barely legible words "Not all of us get the extra help you do from Flitwick - charms is hard!"

"Trust me," Ichigo picked up the old, battered book he had read maybe a hundred times through from the table in front of them - he remembered having accidentally left it there that morning "I know more than anyone. If you're that desperate for help go to Flitwick."

"Or I could ask you," Wayne rebuffed "Even if you struggle with the practical, you're pretty great when it comes to theory." He turned eyes to Ichigo, pleading "I need help, please!"

"Sorry," Ichigo found himself laughing as he trailed the remainder of his page before placing the book back down "Flitwick has made it very clear to me that I need to practice my spells a fair bit in my free time." He twirled his wand between his fingers with an ease he wished he had with actually using it.

"Umm," A very feminine, vaguely familiar voice chimed behind them, "I could help you if you'd like." Ichigo turned around, resting his arm across the back of the chair.

"Oh, hi Olivia." He silently congratulated himself for remembering her name, something he was notoriously bad at doing. She was wearing a fluffy dressing gown over equally fluffy pyjamas and near-laughable pink bunny slippers that looked as though they had been worn outside a fair few times.

"Care to introduce me?" Wayne asked, looking between the two of them, lost.

"Oh, right! Wayne, this is Olivia, she's on the quidditch team."

"Nice to meet you." She giggled.

"You too." Wayne looked her up and down, eyes lingering a little too long on those ridiculous slippers of hers. "You sure you want to help me?"

"Absolutely," She smiled, pretty eyes closed "Flitwick loves me - he says I'm one of his best students."

"Then, yeah - I'd love some help."

She smiled again and sat on the chair to the other side of Wayne. Ichigo didn't know much about Olivia Irvine but he knew she was a mystery and felt as though he would enjoy her presence in future - as weird as she was, she seemed nice.

 **A/N this hasn't been beta'd yet and some was written on my phone and this A/N is written on my phone but it's been so long so it didn't feel fair to keep this back any more - my computer isn't working, I barely get access to the family one if it isn't for homework and typing on my phone is rarely a good idea. So yeah, not abandoned, just circumstantially late.** **~We'reAllABitOdd**


End file.
